


The Many Faces of Gilbert Blythe

by Purple_Slippers_18



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anne and Gilbert, Anne is the Barrys' maid, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gilbert moved to Alberta, Heavy Petting, Making Out, More fluff than angst, romantical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-06-02 04:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19434397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Slippers_18/pseuds/Purple_Slippers_18
Summary: Anne was looking forward to meeting Avonlea's new schoolmaster, and if she could only stop herself from being distracted by the memory of a tall, dark, handsome stranger that she knows she'll never meet again, she was sure she would make an excellent impression on the new teacher, no matter what Minnie May had to say.





	1. The Schoolmaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their eyes locked together, two pieces of a puzzle returned to each other to complete the picture. Whatever the schoolmaster saw in that grand design had him smiling so brightly his joy was blinding. What Anne saw made her want to bolt into the Haunted Wood where the fairies might enchant her away for the rest of eternity.

“It’s terrible! Truly awful! Worse than all of my nightmares together! A tragvesty!”

“I think you mean tragedy. Unless you mean travesty?”

“I mean both!”

Anne had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at Minnie May’s dramatics. Without missing a step, she reached out to her charge and adjusted the ten year old’s boater, the straw hat nearly toppling from the girl’s head as she buried her chin against her chest to continue sulking over what she declared was the very foulest of fates.

Avonlea’s new teacher, it seemed, had injured Miss Minnie May Barry most pitilessly. Not only because they had replaced the girl’s very favourite teacher, Miss Stacy, but because the new schoolmistress wasn’t a mistress at all. He was a schoolmaster.

“I’m sure your new teacher is neither tragedy nor travesty,” Anne soothed, petting the youngest Barry’s blond curls, something that had never failed to calm Minnie May, not since that wretched night four years ago when Anne had fearlessly championed the little girl victoriously through a bout with croup.

Anne Shirley had only been living with the Barry’s as a lady’s maid for a few months then, and Minnie May had been positively unwelcoming to the skinny orphan girl her mother sought to make into a respectable companion for her daughters. Until the night the croup came, Minnie May, who was only six then and had decided she didn’t believe in manners, had thrilled to play many mean tricks on Anne. She would slip toads into Anne’s apron pockets, or walk through the house with muddy boots after Anne had just finished polishing the floors, or make Anne dress and undress her in every gown she owned before breakfast. The one awful prank she had once been so proud of saw Minnie May ‘ _accidentally’_ spilling paste all over Anne’s red hair. She had been so pleased then, she hadn’t even minded when her mother sent her to her room without dinner, giggling as she listened to Anne cry while Diana cut the orange tresses so short it was as if Anne had gone bald.

She had taken such delight in tormenting Anne that it had humbled the child instantly when it was not her mother or sister or even her stern Aunt Josephine who suffered alongside her through that dark night when Minnie May was sure she would choke to death. It had ben Anne who forced her to take the syrupy sweet ipecac hour after hour, Anne who put onions on her feet and a cool cloth on her neck, Anne who held back her hair and yelled at her to spit up all of the poison mucus inside her lungs and never mind that it splashed on the carpet Anne spent all morning beating. And when Minnie May had awoken the following morning, her skin cool and lungs clear, it was Anne who was nestled by her side, one hand still petting her hair even in sleep. When Anne woke and they caught each other’s gaze, forgiveness was asked for and given in a single, silent moment.

They were the best of friends now – kindred spirits Anne liked to say – and with Diana at last off to finishing school in France, it was just Minnie May that Anne had to accompany to school on the first day of term after the harvest.

“Did you at least get to meet this tragical travesty of a teacher at the town hall welcoming last week?” Anne asked, curious about the man now responsible for the academic enlightening of her tiny charge.

“Yes,” Minnie May grumbled, chin still snug against her chest. “It was horrible. He shook my hand.”

“The nerve!” Anne gasped. “That odious blackguard! He should be strung from the nearest gallows! Or doused in oil! Oh, I know: have him tarred and feathered! Imagine it. We could strap him to old Ninny and parade him through Avonlea all the way up to Carmody and beyond! And we could hang a sign from his neck: ‘ _this cretin dared to be a gentleman and shook the hand of Miss Minnie May Barry_ ’. The humiliation would be so vast he would have to leave Prince Edward Island in utter disgrace, feathers and all.” And now, Anne really could not hold back her laughter, amused both with the image of the mystery schoolmaster trussed up like a chicken atop the Barry’s ancient mare, and the positively vexed scowl Minnie May was pointing in her direction.

“You’re not funny,” the girl grumbled.

“Oh come now, a good old fashioned tar and feathering would do just the trick to send the schoolmaster back to…was it Alberta you said he was from?”

“Yes, but he was born here,” Minnie May said. “He left with his family when he was a baby and now, for whatever reason, he’s back. I wish you had been able to come to the welcoming luncheon,” the ten year old sighed. “You wouldn’t be laughing if you had met him, too.”

“I’ve apologized for not being able to go with you enough times to fill the ocean with my regret,” Anne said. “But what was I to do? Leave your poor sister to suffer all alone in Charlottetown?”

“Auntie Josephine could have played nursemaid,” Minnie May retorted.

“You know perfectly well that Aunt Josephine is many amazing things, but a nursemaid is not one of them,” Anne answered back, pleased when Minnie May finally raised her chin, though she did huff so largely her shoulders kissed her ears. “I’m afraid Diana was in a poor way after her farewell soiree. I think you might have wept to see her so ill.”

In truth, the memory of dear Diana, her beautiful black hair gone limp and stringy, her skin as pale as a new bride’s wedding veil, her cherry lips turned grey and dry, and her mind so addled by fever that she had dreamed restlessly for almost a fortnight, still troubled Anne greatly. Though she was glad to have been there to attend her precious friend in her hour of need, the seventeen year old could only admit to herself in the most secret corners of her heart that part of her devoted motivation to Diana’s recovery stemmed from a deep, gnawing guilt.

When Mrs. Barry had charged Anne with Diana’s safe passage to Charlottetown in preparation for her eldest daughter’s departure for Paris with Aunt Josephine, the redhead understood that part of her duties, besides being a companion and protector, was to mind Diana as she took her first important steps into the new world of polite society. The farewell soiree had seemed a perfectly elegant venue for Diana to begin her new adventure.

And when Anne had spotted her lovely friend through the colourful crowd of Aunt Josephine’s wonderfully eclectic and eccentric partygoers engaging in pleasant conversation with Fred Wright – an old school chum of Diana’s who was currently in his last year at Queen’s, though Anne could not remember what he was studying – she hadn’t seen the harm in the pair slipping out to the gardens for a private stroll.

While Anne had not anticipated the terrible downpour that ended up being the cause of Diana’s sickness, what she had known at the time was that there was no need to worry over Diana’s reputation. Although she knew Diana had been sweet on Fred when they were in school and had been missing him these last two years, she also knew Diana was a paradigm of propriety and would not disgrace herself by allowing Fred liberties, like a stolen kiss in the moonlight.

No, only Anne was so wickedly reckless.

“Why are you blushing?” Minnie May asked, bringing Anne back to the present moment. The redhead blinked quickly, focusing her sight as she focused her thoughts. The schoolhouse was very near and the rest of Avonlea’s children were already milling about the whitewashed building, their young minds eager to soak in all of the knowledge their new teacher promised to plant.

“Bit warm, isn’t it?” Anne said, fanning her pink cheeks and hoping Minnie May would believe Anne was simply flushed by the sun rather than being caught up in a memory so scandalous that she had not even committed the event in her private journal.

And yet, as she tried to cool her face, Anne could not help thinking of how her skin had felt so hot that night, the line of her jaw where _his_ hand had held her as gently as if she were made of porcelain, feeling as if it were scorched with a brand hours after they had parted. His cologne had haunted her for days, a ghost that would surprise her at odd, and usually inconvenient, times and make her ache for his return to her side. Her hands remembered the very rhythm of his heart, beating wildly like a bird’s wings in the well of her palm, his chest broad and warm and strong as they’d embraced.

And her lips…

Anne bit her bottom lip hard, trying to recapture that glorious tingle brought on by the memory of his kiss. The urge to get lost in the sensations of her remembrances was sometimes so overwhelming that she was near to bursting with the desire to smile and laugh and sing all at once, but Anne knew it would be entirely improper to do so. She really needed to get her overactive mind under control, and quickly, as she didn’t want the Avonlea schoolmaster’s first impression of her to be a regretful one.

When they entered the school yard, Minnie May made haste to greet her friends and place her bottle of milk in the little brook before returning to Anne for her schoolbooks and lunch.

“Alright then,” Anne declared cheerfully as she placed her hands on her hips. “Let’s meet this new teacher.”

“Really? You’ll meet him?” Minnie May asked, her expression lighting up.

“Of course. I need to inspect the person who is responsible for nurturing the mind of my tiniest charge,” she replied with an adoring smile. “Besides, I have been thinking that I should extend an invitation to him to join our next A.V.I.S. meeting. Although, if his handshakes are as dreadful as you say –”

“Oh, Anne!” Minnie May interrupted, throwing her arms around the young woman with such force that, were Anne not used to the girl’s violent affection, she would have toppled them both over into the dirt. “Thank you! I know, you will find him just as horrid as I do.”

As soon as Minnie May made the declaration, a clattering brass school bell shattered the playful banter of the children and drew their attention to the schoolhouse.

“Let’s go!” Minnie May insisted, pulling Anne along to the front steps of the school and towards the man who was standing by the door waving the bell and greeting the children as they made their way inside.

Anne took a moment to appraise the schoolmaster, noting that he was not wearing the black suit Mr. Phillips had favoured when Diana was in school. Instead he wore dark trousers, old but sturdy boots, a shirt that needed the button on one cuff to be mended, and a vest of soft burgundy wool. His collar was left open, no tie, exposing his neck to the crisp autumn air. Rachel Lynde would certainly have something to say about that when she came around for afternoon tea with Mrs. Barry on Wednesday. Anne wondered if she might not give this new teacher a fair warning of the scandal he would cause in his state of undress when her blue-grey eyes finally took in his face and the words stuck in Anne’s throat.

Anne froze at the bottom of the steps, making Minnie May lurch to a halt so suddenly she lost her footing and tripped down to her knees with an inelegant grunt. Anne did not move to help the little girl to her feet. She remained rooted to the spot, an Anne-tree that would grow forever at the base of the Avonlea schoolhouse, eternally staring at the man perched on the porch who, when he glimpsed Anne approach, also froze and took root where he stood, the bell ceasing its brassy knell. 

Their eyes locked together, two pieces of a puzzle returned to each other to complete the picture. Whatever the schoolmaster saw in that grand design had him smiling so brightly his joy was blinding. What Anne saw made her want to bolt into the Haunted Wood where the fairies might enchant her away for the rest of eternity.

If Minnie May was grumbling as she got back to her feet, Anne didn’t hear. She swallowed her breath and held it as the man – _the new teacher!_ —set the bell aside and made his way down the steps towards her, smiling that wretchedly beautiful smile that had fueled all of her romantical fantasies for the past two weeks.

She had wondered if he would look different under the natural rays of sunlight, having only seen him bathed in the gossamer moon’s shadows of Aunt Josephine’s little conservatory. Her memory, and the dark but so very romantic light, did not do him justice. Awash in the embrace of an autumn sun, he was alive in a way Anne wasn’t sure she could ever truly capture with words or imagination. He was a man of the earth, skin clear and kissed by the sun, face chiseled as if from rock with a straight nose and handsome jaw. There was a dimple peeking from his chin, just below the left corner of his lower lip, and Anne had to rein herself in from leaping forward to kiss the roguish hollow. 

_(but she had not resisted her sinful impulses under the cover of moonshine and ferns; had surrendered to temptation’s siren call and spent half a night learning the taste of him)_

“Mr. Blythe, this is my family’s maid, Anne Shirley,” Minnie May introduced with as much enthusiasm as she might address a rock and ask how its day had been. Acknowledging the ten year old’s words with a light bob of his head, Mr. Blythe stuck out his hand and, on instinct, Anne took it.

It was just how she remembered: larger than hers, a bit calloused, his thumb sweeping across her knuckles in a cheeky caress that could almost be as bold as a kiss if Mrs. Lynde was watching. It made Anne feel dangerous, and wicked, and breathless, and, at the moment, absolutely terrified.

“Good morning,” Mr. Blythe said, and his voice had her close to swooning.

His sound had been a detail Anne could never seem to get right when she revisited the memory of him and the moon and the conservatory. His voice was not as husky or desperate with wanting as she had imagined, but it was solid and silvery and it rang in her ears with the same echoing chime as his brass school bell.

“My goodness,” he sighed around his wonderful smile, astounded and so pleased his hazel eyes grew dark as they shook hands. “This is such a surprise. Is it really you, Carrots?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: She had kissed a man and never even knew his name. Anne Shirley really was a shameful creature.


	2. The Moonlight Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When they had been forced to part, perhaps Anne had been bitter to give up her Moonlight Prince, but she reasoned she would get over it soon enough, for she was determined to dwell only on the elation her heart had felt when she was in his arms and not the loss when she was out of them. A sweet memory, that was all he was ever supposed to be.
> 
> And now, he was Minnie May’s teacher.

_ “Why can’t you tell me your name?” he whispered, voice coarse with longing as he bit her earlobe before soothing the sting with a hot brush of his tongue. _

_ Anne couldn’t help the moan that slipped past her kiss-abused lips, the sound a positively wanton mating call that echoed in the little conservatory, empty save for the two strangers curled around one another under the cover of pale moonlight streaming through the large windows that spanned from wall to ceiling. They were tucked away in a corner thick with potted ferns, hidden from everything but the darkness and moon and each other. _

_ “It’s not a matter of can’t,” Anne replied, reaching up on tip-toe to kiss him again. When he nudged his lips away from her, she was not deterred, but kissed the dimple at his chin instead. “I simply won’t.” _

_ “And what do either of us gain by such an omission?” _

_ “Don’t you think,” Anne began, running her hands along his chest, fingers resting over his racing heartbeat, “all of this is ever so much more romantical if it remains a secret rendezvous between strangers?” _

_ His handsome face softened as he looked upon her, eyes crinkling as his hazel gaze explored her face as tenderly as a lover’s caress. _

_ “I’m sure you could convince me of it if I disagreed,” he teased, smiling that wonderful smile that made Anne’s knees shake since their eyes had first locked only a few hours before. She managed to restrain a squeak as she reached for him again, but her Moonlight Prince – for she had decided to call him that when she found herself captivated by the way the light of the moon tangled in his dark curls like a crown of silver – evaded her embrace again, keeping her in the circle of his arms but not allowing her to claim his mouth. “But I still want your name,” he insisted. _

_ “Call me whatever you want, just never stop kissing me, please!” _

_ Had she not been nearly mad with the desire for his lips again, Anne would have been humiliated at her abandonment of her pride. But her plea was answered, and the Moonlight Prince lowered his head to kiss her, his mouth slick and soft, stealing the breath from her body. _

_ “I must call you something,” he whispered against her lips, and she could feel his smile and it warmed her up from the inside out. _

_ One of his magnificent hands swept up her back and curled around her neck before his fingers plunged into her hair, ruining the chignon Diana has spent an hour setting. He tugged at her red hair and Anne could hear the tittering  _ plink-plink _of her hairpins falling on the marble floor. She adored how he wove his fingers around the tresses and leaned heavily into his touch. When he managed to free a single ribbon of long, straight red hair, Anne trembled on the edge of tears as he brought the strands to his lips and kissed them as gently as a fairy would sip dew from a flower’s petal. When he turned his gaze back on her, Anne was lost in the dark magic of his eyes and drew nearer without meaning to._

_ “I’ll call you Carrots, then,” he declared, giving her hair a tug meant to entice her closer. _

_ On any other occasion that a strange boy pulled her hair and called her 'carrots', Anne imagined she’d be inclined to slap him across the head with the nearest object. _

_ When the Moonlight Prince called her 'carrots', she pressed forward eagerly to capture his mouth with hers once again… _

** ~*~ **

“Anne?” Minnie May asked, freeing the seventeen year old from the glorious memory of her Moonlight Prince and their night of secret kisses. “Don’t you have anything you want to say to Mr. Blythe?”

The little girl was vibrating with delight. She knew anyone who called Anne carrots was in for a brutal thrashing, both in words and maybe slaps, and she was eager to see her horrible new teacher get properly executed. Her bliss quickly quieted, however, when Anne remained still and silent before Mr. Blythe.

The redhead opened her mouth, but words didn’t form. She tried to say ‘ _good morning_ ’, or ‘ _how are you?_ ’, or ‘ _what are you doing here?!_ ’, but not a single sound could be freed from her throat. She could only seem to stare in horrific awe, her blue-grey eyes joined with his hazel ones, as warm and kind as she remembered, and even perhaps ringed with a touch of the desire that had overpowered them when they’d snuck away from Diana’s soiree.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you Anne Shirley,” the deliriously handsome schoolmaster said, his greeting genuine and pleased. “I’m Gilbert Blythe.”

For whatever reason, hearing him say his name (say _her_ name!) managed to destroy Anne’s petrified trance. She pulled her hand away from his and took a small step back. Her retreat was not unnoticed, and Mr. Blythe’s smile began to wane.

“See you at home, Minnie May,” Anne finally said, cringing at how breathless she sounded. “You can walk back with Claire, yes?”

“Do I have t—”

Anne turned away and nearly ran from the schoolyard, ignoring Minnie May’s protest and the way Mr. Blythe’s eyes seemed to frown just as deeply as his lips did when she gave him her back. Her spine tickled, knowing he was watching her retreat, imagining that his beautiful hazel eyes were following the length of her body from ankle to nape until she was finally out of sight.

What a disaster!

When Anne was deep in the heart of the Haunted Woods she finally allowed herself to unleash an agonized cry ripped from the bottom of her frantic heart, a heart that was beating so frighteningly fast she felt dizzy.

How could he be here? And Avonlea’s new schoolmaster at that?! Had he found out who she was and followed her as some sort of cruel joke? No, he couldn’t have done, he hadn’t even known her name until Minnie May introduced them.

It was simply Fate, then, spinning Her wheel of fortune and laughing at the twisted destiny She conjured for Anne. First Fate had seen fit to give Anne’s parents over to death when she was only a baby, then She had directed the little orphan girl from one home to the next, seeing her used and abused and unloved until Anne had been sure she was the most loathed redhead to walk the earth. When at last Fate brought her to the Barry’s, Anne thought she had been given just a hint of reprieve. After all, the Barrys were kind, Diana had become her most precious friend, and even if she was condemned to a life of service, at least she would be cared for. It could almost make up for the fact that she would never be able to live out the hopes and dreams she had for herself.

And that had been what spurred her actions that night at Aunt Josephine’s. For years Anne had known that her imaginings of adventure and romance and independence would never be her reality. She was a lady’s maid. She would never go to school, never know a life lived for herself when there was Diana and Minnie May to tend to, never have her own house or husband or children. It was a dreadful thing to know that one’s life would never be what one wished.

But then _he_ had looked at her.

Gilbe – Mr. Blyt – her _Moonlight Prince!_ – was every romantic fantasy Anne had ever imagined! He had stood before her under the clandestine candlelight of the ballroom, the flames licking his cheeks in bronze and making his curls shine. He’d complimented her, asked for a dance, smiled at her and laughed with her and made her feel, for the first time, that she was beautiful. Anne was sure that even Rachel Lynde couldn’t blame her when, after two hours of talking, and three dances and a bold caress to the back of her neck, Anne had happily shown her Moonlight Prince to the quiet conservatory when he’d commented how the ballroom was feeling stuffy and wouldn’t it be nice to get a bit of air somewhere quiet.

She’d known (hoped desperately) that the kisses and touches that had happened that night would when they were finally just the two of them in the dark. It had been a dream to lose herself in his touch and his kisses, and it was made all the more tragically romantic because what they shared would never go beyond the hour lost in each other’s embrace.

There would be no courting, no sunlight strolls, no Sunday dinners with families, no declarations, not even any names.

Anne would return to her life as the Barry’s maid and the Moonlight Prince would go back to whatever life he lived away from her. And Anne had been fine with that new spoke on her wheel of fortune, truly she had, believing it was kind of Fate to let her taste something so sweet as a lover’s kiss when the years before her dictated that she should never know such passion.

When they had been forced to part, perhaps Anne had been bitter to give up her Moonlight Prince, but she reasoned she would get over it soon enough, for she was determined to dwell only on the elation her heart had felt when she was in his arms and not the loss when she was out of them. A sweet memory, that was all he was ever supposed to be.

And now, he was Minnie May’s teacher.

Humiliation had Anne yanking on her braids and pacing the forest like a crazed wood witch.

Her Moonlight Prince, apparently a Mr. Gilbert Blythe, was the new schoolmaster of Avonlea. His position naturally afforded him a level of respect that Anne could never hope to compete with as a lady’s maid, even though she belonged to one of the richest families in the county. All it would take from him was a single word, just a mere insinuation, and Anne’s life in Avonlea would turn to broken leaves doomed to crumble in the wind.

The thought of Mr. Blythe taking from her the life she'd fought so hard to keep filled Anne with a rage so keen it made her vibrate. If that was truly the man’s plan, he would be in for a fight the likes of which had only ever been written of in epical poetry. Anne was part of Avonlea, now. She belonged to the island as much as it belonged to her and no cheeky boy disguised as a civilized teacher would tear her from the one place in all of the many places she’d lived that Anne truly felt was her home.

Mind made up, Anne gave herself a few minutes to calm her nerves. She fixed her hair, brushed the wrinkles out of her dress, and with her head held high, she started back for the Barry’s homestead. She still had chores to do and had lost enough time – no thanks to that horrible Mr. Blythe! – to do them.

She would have all day to plan what to say to Mr. Blythe when she escorted Minnie May to school the following morning. Anne would dedicate her every thought to her speech, shaping it to be the most eloquent and penetrating dialogue she would ever deliver. Her words would be her weapon, as they always had been, and she would use them to let the schoolmaster know exactly where they stood.

Just let him call her 'carrots' again. Mr. Blythe would never know what hit him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has read this story. And an extra thanks to those who took the time to kudos and comment!
> 
> Next Chapter: Anne hoped to have at least a day's reprieve to think of what to say to Avonlea's new schoolmaster when next they met face-to-face; too bad Gilbert Blythe has other ideas.


	3. The Visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had thought when she’d left (fled) the schoolyard that morning that she would be granted some absolution from having to see the man, at least for a day, just enough time to collect her thoughts so she’d know how to talk with him when they met again. But Mr. Blythe was not a man of patience or compassion, it seemed, for he’d followed her to her home, the villain!

“Anne! Could you come to the door?”

Tossing the scrub brush in the bucket of soapy water and wiping the sweat off her brow, Anne pushed herself up from the floor and stretched her body. She was very nearly done washing the kitchen floor, the planks so shiny under her feet they could almost be a mirror. Blowing out a breath that flicked a slim strand of loose red hair out of her eyes, Anne started for the front of the house.

“Ah, there she is,” Mr. Barry said to their visitor. “Anne, I would like to introduce Mr. Gilbert Blythe, the new schoolmaster.”

Anne almost tripped over her own feet.

She had thought when she’d left ( _fled_ ) the schoolyard that morning that she would be granted some absolution from having to see the man, at least for a day, just enough time to collect her thoughts so she’d know how to talk with him when they met again. But Mr. Blythe was not a man of patience or compassion, it seemed, for he’d followed her to her home, the villain!

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss,” he said, nodding and smiling at her.

Awash with dread, Anne stared at the man balanced charmingly in the archway of the Barry’s foyer. He struck a trim figure, still in the clothes he’d worn that morning, but now he had a black scarf knotted tight against his throat and there was a cap held politely in his hands, his thumbs fidgeting with the brim.

Seeing him look so dashing made Anne uncomfortably aware of the mess she looked with her watermarked apron and haphazard kerchief tied messily around equally messy red hair, not to mention she knew her pale skin was likely a blotchy mess from her exertions scrubbing the floors. 

“Is everything alright with Minnie May?” she asked, for it was the only thing she could think to say and it made her cringe that her voice sounded so flat.

“Other than the fact that she welcomed me on my first day with a toad on my desk, all is quite well,” the schoolmaster said around a charming chuckle.

“That rascal of a daughter of mine!” Mr. Barry exclaimed. “I apologize, Mr. Blythe, and I promise Mrs. Barry and I will have firm words with our youngest.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Gilbert insisted. “I found the greeting fairly unique – all the other children gave me apples. Minnie May’s gift was unusual, but I give her credit for her creativity.”

Both Anne and Mr. Barry were struck dumb by Gilbert’s praise, staring at the teacher as if he had sprouted a second head before their eyes. Amused, the young man politely cleared his throat to break the incredulous staring.

“If you did not call to report on Minnie May’s…gift, then what has brought you to our home?” Mr. Barry wondered.

“I’ve actually come to speak with Miss Shirley,” Gilbert announced, nodding in Anne’s direction, pretending not to notice when her posture stiffened. “When I was thanking Minnie May for the toad, she mentioned that Miss Shirley belonged to a society in Avonlea –”

“The Avonlea Village Improvement Society,” Anne interrupted compulsively before biting her lip to hold back a curse for having spoken in the first place.

“Yes,” he said, grinning crookedly at her. “Minnie May wasn’t able to explain it all to me, but I was intrigued with the concept and think I would like to become a member. I thought Miss Shirley would be the best person to come to for more information.”

“Of course,” Mr. Barry agreed, chest puffed out proudly that the new teacher sought _his_ maid for guidance. “Anne, you may take Mr. Blythe to the garden and discuss your society.”

“But Mr. Barry –”

“Not to worry, dear, you have time before you need to get dinner on, and I’ll see to Minnie May when she returns home. Off with you, and do be sure to show Mr. Blythe the chrysanthemums.”

“I…yes, of course, Mr. Barry.”

Failing to keep her face from scowling just the tiniest bit (thankfully, Mr. Barry never noticed), Anne brushed past Gilbert Blythe and started out the front door, leading him around to the back of the house and never looking over her shoulder to see if he followed.

The Barry’s back garden was vast and covered almost half an acre. There was a patio for taking tea, and a huge a covered gazebo lined with pink rosebushes. The lawn was trimmed in perfect perpendicular lines, looking like a pristine shamrock lake. Anne marched the unwanted visitor past the ancient sugar maple that was lush with leaves just starting to turn in the early autumn air and at last came upon the neatly trimmed rows of chrysanthemums. She stopped there and breathed in deeply the herbal scent of the violet flowers, needing just a minute to gather herself before the inevitable conversation.

She could feel Gilbert’s gaze on her back, knew his keen, pretty eyes were tracing the line of her spine. Truly, the man was too brazen. Turning to face him, Anne steeled her nerve and started to speak.

“Mr. Blythe –”

“Call me Gilbert.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because addressing you by your Christian name suggests a familiarity that we do not possess, Mr. Blythe,” Anne objected as coldly as she could muster.

“Don’t we?” he asked, approaching her slowly, decidedly, a lion ready to pounce on a gazelle. “Possess a familiarity, that is.”

“Mr. Blythe, whatever you are insinuating, I must ask that you cease this instant,” Anne demanded, not bothering to rein in her temper. “Whatever you think happened between us – _and I will claim until my very last breath that there was nothing that ever did or ever could happen between us!_ – I demand that you exorcise those thoughts from your imagination.”

“My memory, you mean,” he countered, still smiling, the fiend!

“A silly dream, is what I mean,” she retorted hotly, knowing her cheeks were flaming with her ire and certainly making her appear as some sort of ogre. Much as she wanted to assume an air of regal authority and assertiveness as she dressed down Mr. Blythe, scaring him away with her homely looks and bad temper would do just as well, so long as her message got across to the smirking young man.

“You give me far too much credit if you think I can convince myself that what happened that night was all in my head,” he confessed softly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well, can’t you try really hard?!” Anne implored.

“Have you been able to write it off so easily?”

Anne floundered for a moment at Gilbert’s tone. It sounded as if he were injured by her request.

“Mr. Blythe –”

“I wish you would call me Gilbert.”

“I am not a genie and I don’t grant wishes!” Anne snapped. “ _Mr. Blythe_ , if you have come here – to my work! – under the guise of seeking admittance to A.V.I.S. in order to blackmail me –”

“Carrots!”

“Oh enough!” Anne shrieked before cringing and peeking back at the house. When she didn’t see Mr. Barry come to the window to investigate, she relaxed her shoulders, but the tension in her face remained. “Are you here because you wish to extort some sort of…arrangement with me?”

She kept her eyes closed as she said the words, mortified as images flashed before her of the two of them entwined, alone in some shoddy little hotel room, door locked, curtains drawn, bodies entangled as clothing was peeled away leaving only flesh and lips and hands and sighs of pleasure. Anne was furious with herself when a tingling warmth settled low in her belly at her imagination’s visions, ashamed that a part of her responded to the idea of being Gilbert Blythe’s lover.

“Is that the sort of man you think I am, Anne?” he asked, voice hollow with hurt and edged with the sting of offense.

Anne opened her eyes to behold the man before her, taking stock of him in the same way she would do inventory on the pantry every week. He was tall, her head barely reaching the underside of his chin. His body was trim and strong (she remembered all of the wonderful muscles in his arms that her hands had discovered during their tryst). He had a head of dark curls that were always in an artful chaotic mess, like the wild bearberry bushes that grew all over the island. His jaw was perfect, as was his chin, his nose and his brow. His eyes were hazel, she’d spotted that almost from the start, but she knew that if one got closer (so much closer that noses touched and breath mingled sweetly between them) they would see the flecks of gold that dotted his irises like mischievous little fireflies. His mouth was sitting in a serious line now, but Anne knew how it curved in a lopsided smile, how his lips would purse like a cupid’s bow as he tried to restrain his wonderful laugh, how his mouth was magic and fairy dust as it touched every inch of bared skin at her throat.

“But that’s just the thing: I have no idea what sort of man you are,” Anne said, surprised at how wounded she sounded as she gave voice to the thoughts that had been plaguing her since seeing him that morning. “You are a stranger, Mr. Blythe. You are now just as you were that night and I…I allowed you to…I permitted liberties without even knowing a thing about you, not even your name.”

“You did,” he agreed gently, “and I returned the permission.”

Indeed, he had. For every kiss Anne had given, he’d repaid. Every exploring caress she initiated was met with its tender twin as their hands had danced around their bodies. Fervent whispers of ardour that she’d traced across his jaw with unrestrained delight were given back to her in his deep timber against the shell of her ear. It had been as if they were playing a game of outmatching the other with kisses and touches and pretty words, not wanting to be outdone, never conceding defeat. In the heat of the moment it had been everything Anne had wished. Now, in the unflinching afternoon sunlight in the back of the Barry’s garden, Anne was forced to truly consider the consequences of her wild abandon.

“But it’s not the same,” she exclaimed, furious with her traitorous body as she was forced to repress the shivers that wanted to wrack it helplessly as the memories of that night continued to play before her eyes like the dancing shadows cast by lantern light on a wall. “You’re a man, a respectable one, too, Mr. Schoolmaster. I am just a maid and my word against yours will count for very little.”

Gilbert lowered his chin, chagrined, and it gave Anne a bit of hope that he finally understood.

“And why should our words have to go against each other?”

Or perhaps he did not.

“I will not be turned out, not again,” Anne insisted, taking a step closer to the man that was both her dream and nightmare all at once. “I cannot be cast away…I wouldn’t survive it.”

She watched as his brow furrowed at her declaration, lips parting as if to speak. But he seemed to think better of it after an instant and closed his mouth, swallowing as he considered her confession.

“So, you really want to pretend that night never happened?” he asked.

Mesmerized by how sad he seemed when he asked his question, it took Anne a moment to collect herself and answer.

“There is no greater wish I have in my heart,” she replied, hoping she didn’t sound as hurt as she felt or he looked.

Nodding his understanding, Gilbert offered her a forlorn little smile before taking one measured step back.

“Very well, Miss Shirley,” he agreed.

Anne nearly cried in relief.

The man was going to cooperate and she was safe from banishment. She didn’t let the tears that had been brimming throughout most of the exchange escape her eyes, and she did not give in to the compulsion to kiss Gilbert in exuberant gratitude (after all, kissing him is what had gotten her into this pickle in the first place). Instead, she wiped her hands on her apron and relaxed her stiff posture.

“I’m am so very pleased we have an understanding. Good day, Mr. Blythe. I will show you out.”

“But we haven’t discussed the Avonlea Village Improvement Society,” he protested, unmoving from his place in the garden.

It was all Anne could do to not scream to the heavens.

“You don't need to continue to pretend,” she assured through grit teeth. “I know you only used a false interest in A.V.I.S. as a ruse to speak with me.”

“Awfully sure of your charms, aren’t you?”

Anne blushed at Gilbert’s accusation.

“I only meant to say –”

“That you think my only intention on calling was to see you and discuss something I understand we are both to forget,” he finished for her, crossing his arms as those mischievous fireflies started dancing across his eyes. “Since the subject you think I came for has been wiped from existence, then surely the only reason I have visited the Barry’s is to find out more about your society.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Minnie May says you’re a co-founder and current president.”

“I am –”

“Excellent. Then I submit my application to join A.V.I.S. directly. Is there any paperwork I need to fill out before the next meeting?”

“You aren’t serious,” Anne protested, confused as to how she lost control of the conversation.

“I am,” Gilbert replied.

“So you are blackmailing me, then?!” she accused, puffing out her chest indignantly, mouth curled down in a horrifying frown.

“Not at all,” Gilbert assured. “But I wouldn’t want to be you when people ask why the new schoolmaster’s application to A.V.I.S. was so indiscriminately rejected.”

“Oh, you deplorable, deceitful, despicable cad!” Anne screeched.

Seeing her so furious was equal parts amusing, terrifying, and arousing. Gilbert had to do his best to keep his feelings in check as he watched Anne struggle to decide on her next action. From the way her eyes darted around the garden, he was almost certain the redhead was contemplating ripping the prized chrysanthemum bush up from the roots, beating him to death with it, and then burying his body back under the shrub when she was through.

Of course, Anne did not kill him, but the narrowed, steely gaze filled with ire and conflict that she leveled at him directly certainly could have done the trick on a lesser man.

“I take it my application for membership has been accepted?” he asked cheekily.

“Leave now!” Anne demanded, pointing to the front gate.

“But A.V.I.S. –”

“We meet next Friday at the church at six o’clock!” Anne replied, angrily conceding defeat. “Bring something to share with the group.”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Gilbert said cheerily, nodding at Anne before putting on his hat and leaving the way he came. If he happened to hear Anne utter a very unladylike curse and kick the chrysanthemum bush, he knew enough not to let her catch his laughter at her expense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi All! Before I embark on a little holiday with the fam-jam, I wanted to post this chapter for you to enjoy. I won't post again for about a week or so, and I was just really excited to let you all see what would happen when Anne and Gil had to discuss (read - not discuss at all) their feelings. 
> 
> Special thanks to everyone who has read this story, and if you kudos, or bookmarked, or subscribed, or commented, another round of thanks!
> 
> Next Chapter: Gilbert attends his first A.V.I.S. meeting


	4. The A.V.I.S. Inductee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he was fifteen and his father had died, Gilbert had left Alberta and jumped on the first tramp steamer that would have him. That action had taken every drop of courage he’d possessed and yet doing that, leaving behind his home, his life, all that he had known, suddenly seemed so infinitely simpler than trying to meet the woman before him. Gilbert was nineteen, now. He was a world traveller, a Queen’s graduate, a truly self-made man. He had passions he was following and plans for his future, and all of a sudden, he was baffled over how to approach a cute girl.

_She was a flame sprite brought to life under the flickering light of the thousand dancing candles that illuminated the grand ballroom. Her hair was the color of sunset as it kissed the horizon of the Caribbean Sea, her skin a creamy sky filled with constellations of freckles, and her eyes were the colour of open ocean waters, neither blue nor grey, and it all reminded Gilbert of his time travelling the world by sea._

_The buttercream gown she wore hugged her figure perfectly, accenting bosom and waist and hips in such a way that Gilbert envied the lace that was blessed to hold her. Her lips were two delicate orange blossoms, bringing forth what was probably the most exquisite feature he’d noticed about the girl._

_Her words._

_Like a goddess risen from the embers, she commanded the room to total silence as she took her place upon the stage before the band. The musicians had stopped their playing and vacated the area, leaving only her standing in the centre, slippered feet on the precipice of the dais._

_“Now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.”_

_Her voice was so clear, her emotions raw and honest as she tasted every word as if each were ambrosia from Mount Olympus. Her face was unmasked to the crowd as she expressed her vulnerable delight at the meaning of the passage, and Gilbert imagined that he might be seeing the real Jane Eyre given life from the page, for that is how euphorically the red-haired girl read the words._

_He didn’t realize he was standing and staring like a love-struck fool, the crowd around him having erupted in applause and whoops of encouragement at the little lady’s reading. The flame sprite (and Gilbert was eternally annoyed that he had not clearly heard the announcement made before her reading so that he might know her name) remained perched on the edge of the stage for a few minutes, basking in the praise of the partygoers, before graciously curtsying away so that the band might return._

_“Isn’t she breathtaking?” the person behind him exclaimed zealously, clapping with great gusto._

_Gilbert regarded the stranger, noting that they had elected to attend the party dressed as a scarlet parrot, with plumes of feathers at her neck and face painted around the nose and mouth to resemble a beak. It was not the first bird that had spoken to him this evening, for indeed many of the guests at Diana Barry’s farewell party had elected to come in fancy dress, and it made Gilbert shy that he had not made more of an effort. As it was, when his Queen’s chum, Fred Wright, had invited him to tag along to the party, Gilbert thought that his Sunday best suit would suffice. Though he was hardly the only young man in a suit and tie, he certainly was among the few who had not taken advantage of the soiree to let loose and truly express themselves in costume._

_“She’s good,” he agreed with his parrot neighbor. “So invested. It’s…truly remarkable.”_

_“Lad, is this your first time?” Madame Parrot wondered eagerly._

_“Pardon?” Gilbert balked, feeling a warmth spread from the back of his neck and up his ears._

_“Oh, I do believe a blushing virgin is in our midst,” the parrot giggled, patting Gilbert on the shoulder with far too much familiarity._

_“Dear boy, is that true?” another guest, dressed as a blue jay, exclaimed, leaning his tall frame over both Gilbert and Madame Parrot._

_“I…well, that is…um you see –”_

_“Oh dear, you poor thing, it’s true!” the blue jay gasped. “You have never been to a Miss Josephine Barry gala!”_

_“Oh!” Gilbert gasped, realization finally dawning on him before he smiled at the fowl pair. “Yes, this is my first time,” he confessed with a shrug._

_“You must be finding it a bit overwhelming,” Madame Parrot said in sympathy. “But try not to fear the unknown. This is a place where magic can happen if you are only daring enough to…how did the little lady put it?”_

_“Seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils,” Monsieur Blue Jay finished before gulping back the rest of his wine._

_A drink actually sounded like a spectacular idea._

_Excusing himself from the feathered duo, Gilbert made his way across the ballroom towards the refreshment table. The band had started up again and people were milling towards the dancefloor. As he got closer to the punch bowl, a figure in soft buttercream cut him off._

_It was her! The fire sprite! The titian maid who’d recited the passage from Jane Eyre. She was so close to him that Gilbert could smell the delicate, fragile fragrance of the irises woven in her hair, the indigo petals like painted teardrops against the flame-kissed tresses. She was preoccupied with filling a napkin with strawberries, humming to herself in that dulcet pitch that made Gilbert’s heart beat quick and his mouth go dry._

_He should turn away, go find Fred, but the words the flame sprite had recited echoed in his mind._

‘…a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth…’

_When he was fifteen and his father had died, Gilbert had left Alberta and jumped on the first tramp steamer that would have him. That action had taken every drop of courage he’d possessed and yet doing that, leaving behind his home, his life, all that he had known, suddenly seemed so infinitely simpler than trying to meet the woman before him._

_Gilbert was nineteen, now. He was a world traveller, a Queen’s graduate, a truly self-made man. He had passions he was following and plans for his future, and all of a sudden, he was baffled over how to approach a cute girl._

_But baffled or no, Gilbert Blythe was a man who did not shy away from a challenge. Determined to meet the flame sprite, Gilbert raised his hand to gently tap her on the shoulder._

_“Hello, miss?”_

_When she twirled around to face him, eyes wide and bright, teeth nibbling her bottom lip and a splash of strawberry juice tucked in the corner of her mouth, Gilbert was certain that was the moment he fell in love._

_“Oh!” the fire sprite exclaimed as she gifted him a smile that rivaled the luster of her red hair. “Hello…_

**~*~**

“And let me just say that it is such a compliment to our little club that Mr. Blythe has taken an interest in joining the Avonlea Village Improvement Society. On behalf of all of the members, I would like to welcome you: salutations, Gilbert Blythe.”

The group gave a polite round of applause and were it not for the remarkably unimpressed expression Anne was wearing, Gilbert felt he’d be more inclined to be embarrassed rather than amused by the theatrical introduction.

“Thank you, Miss Pye,” he replied, offering a smile and nod to the woman across the long table.

“Not at all,” Josie Pye scoffed with a well practiced flirtatious brush of her blond hair. “It’s exciting for us to have a new member. And thank you so much for the apples.” Josie gestured to the basket of fruit in the centre of the table

“Well, I was told to bring something along,” he quipped, looking to Anne.

“Shall we get to business?” the redhead huffed, moving to stand before the others. “Mr. Spurgeon, please review last meeting’s minutes.”

And so, the A.V.I.S. meeting pressed forward. Overall, it was not unlike other committees that Gilbert had sat on in college. There was discussion over fundraising projects and dissension over how to spend the forecasted sums. Twice Anne had to bring the meeting to order when other members got caught up in impassioned debates for the causes they championed. There were digressions and deliberations and a break in the middle so members could take some air or help themselves to the snack of Gilbert’s apples.

Throughout it all, Gilbert watched Anne, impressed with her maneuvering of the conversations, how she was able to keep topics on track and ignore Josie Pye’s insubordinate jibes. She was not unlike the fire sprite that had commanded a room of over one hundred with her recitation of Jane Eyre, only in the poorly lit church of Avonlea she was now Anne Shirley, still invested and remarkable, but in a way that seemed much more tangible to Gilbert. It felt as if he were to reach for her now she wouldn’t disappear as he’d thought she might when he’d approached her at the punch bowl, although he was fairly sure that if he tried to tap her shoulder in the middle of the A.V.I.S. meeting Anne was likely to brain him with her gavel.

That image had him restraining a hard chuckle.

His fire sprite – his sweet Carrots – had been a torment and treasure that plagued his dreams and memories every day since the party in Charlottetown. When she’d been called away and so hurriedly taken from his arms, Gilbert had spent the rest of the night trying to find her, eventually forced to relent his search and walk with Fred Wright back to their boarding house when the party came to a close.

It was Gilbert’s most earnest regret that he did not convince the titian pixie to give him her name. He truly had believed he was doomed to never see her – _experience her_ – again, and then she had shown up like an autumn forest fairy leading Miss Minnie May Barry to his school.

The serendipitous surprise made Gilbert feel as if his chest might explode from sheer happiness. His Carrots had found him and her name was Anne and she lived in Avonlea and they would see each other almost every day! To spend more time with the marvel that was Anne Shirley was all that Gilbert could hope for, but those hopes were soundly dashed by the very subject of his desire, and on the same day of their most coveted reunion.

Still, because she did not wish to be with him did not mean that Gilbert could not observe everything that was so very Anne about Anne Shirley. Since their conversation in the Barry’s garden almost two weeks ago, besides having a new fondness for chrysanthemums, Gilbert had found many new things to adore about the young redheaded woman.

He saw her every morning, for she still dutifully walked Minnie May to school each day. Though she would say little more than ‘ _good morning’_ to him, he would watch as she teased her tiny charge, or gave her gentle scoldings to behave, or spin her around the schoolyard just to make her laugh. Sometimes both Anne and Minnie May would arrive with their heads adorned in flower crowns (Anne was the very best at making flower crowns, so Minnie May proudly reported), and it would make Gilbert think of how he’d first thought of Anne as a sprite, something magic and not of this world, sent to seduce him with her freckles and red hair.

She had made it perfectly clear that she was ashamed of how they had met, and Gilbert shouldered his share of blame for what had transpired between them. His father had not raised him to be a scoundrel, and it was utterly unlike him to accept the invitation of a pretty girl whose name he did not know to get lost in a dark corner for a rendezvous filled with kisses and caresses. But there had been something about her that night, just as there was still something about her when he’d visited her at the Barry’s, or when he would see her in the schoolyard, or here leading the A.V.I.S. meeting, that left Gilbert wanting to be close to Anne.

Perhaps their introduction had been unorthodox and not at all respectable, but he could not accept that the way they met had been wrong. For while it was true that his first ideas of Anne were gained from passionate kisses and hot touches, Gilbert liked her for so much more than the desire she stirred within him. Everyday there was something else for Gilbert Blythe to love about Anne Shirley, and he hoped that someday she might find it in her heart to forgive him the transgression of kissing her without first knowing her name so that they could start off with each other on the right foot.

Someday.

“And that brings us to our new and most crucial business, finding suitable fairgrounds for the Autumn Jubilee.”

“It’s the Apple Fair, Anne,” Josie snorted, rolling her eyes.

“Apple Fair does not capture the bountiful essence of this event. Autumn Jubilee has much more scope of the imagination,” Anne said breathily, eyes going out of focus as she seemed to be envisioning the grandeur of the event.

“What if we called it the Fall Funfair?”

Anne and Josie both scoffed at Moody’s proposal, the young man slouching low in his chair with burning, shame-red ears while his friend, Charlie Sloane, whispered consolations that he thought the suggestion was one of Moody’s best.

“What is the Autumn Jubilee?” Gilbert wondered.

“I’m so glad you asked!” Josie exclaimed, cutting Anne off before she could answer. “The _Apple Fair_ has been an Avonlea tradition for the last ten years. My father started it. On the third weekend in October, just before the first frost, we set up fairgrounds to celebrate the harvest.”

“It’s a regular lollapalooza!” Charlie cut in. “There’s the usual blue-ribbon competitions for pigs and horses, but then there’s the games! Archery contests, and wrestling, bobbing for apples, ring-toss –”

“The jam competition is my favourite…or no, the pie contest…but then there’s sweetbreads, too,” Moody offered, his face shining like a lightbulb as he started listing all of the various apple-themed food Gilbert could expect to indulge in at this fair.

“But that was the last nine years,” Anne stressed. “This is the _tenth_ year, and the decade anniversary of this most cherished Avonlea tradition requires a touch of sumptuousness.”

“And what do you suggest?” Gilbert asked, amused at Anne’s animated vocabulary.

“A carnival,” she replied, her eyes seeking out each member of the society (and if she lingered a second longer on Gilbert than she did the others she would never admit it). “I’ve already received confirmation from a traveling midway that they would be happy to attend our Autumn Jubilee.” Anne removed letters from her dress pocket and laid them out for all to read.

“A Ferris wheel?! Truly, Anne?” Moody asked in awe.

“Yes,” she exclaimed delightedly. “Imagine, Avonlea hosting the very first Ferris wheel ever on Prince Edward Island!”

“It would bring hundreds!” Moody cried out.

“The attendance could be record breaking,” Charlie agreed. “The tourists would make Avonlea’s farmers rich in a single weekend!”

“And that’s why we need to decide now,” Anne insisted. “I will write to the midway managers tonight so that they can make preparations on their end. In the morning we can post an announcement at town hall to let the rest of the village know to stock up on jams and ciders and preservatives and quilts to sell. I’m sure there will be many seeking rooms to rent for a night or two, so we should start a list of those who have beds to let and what they will charge –”

“You’re forgetting, Anne Shirley,” Josie interrupted with the snide pomposity of one who believed that their words were the most important in the conversation, “that we have not settled on where this carnival will be held.”

“And that is why I said it is the most crucial business we will discuss this evening,” Anne deflected without blinking an eye.

“Which grounds did you host the fair on last year?” Gilbert asked.

“My family’s farm,” Moody said. “But we decided to lease half our acres in the spring. The new tenants don’t want to loan us the land, I’ve already asked. With what’s left there wouldn’t be enough for the craft tents, let alone a Ferris wheel.”

“How much land do you think you’ll need?” Gilbert wondered.

“When we hosted the fair at Moody’s we had sixty acres and even then it was near to bursting,” Josie said. “With a midway and carnival games and tourists added into the mix we’d need at least twice that.”

“One hundred and thirty-six acres to be precise,” Anne said. When the rest of A.V.I.S. gave her incredulous looks, Anne shrugged under their intense stares. “I asked for measurements,” she said as if that explained how she’d estimated the exact amount of land they would need.

Gilbert thought it perfectly clever of her.

“I think I can help,” he said, drawing the attention of all in the room. Even Anne deemed to look at him as he stood. “My family’s orchard is one hundred and fifty acres. That’s more than enough. I confess, I haven’t been to the grounds since moving back –”

“That’s right, you’re boarding with the Cuthberts at Green Gables, right Gilbert?” Josie interrupted.

“Um, yes…so, when my father and I left, no arrangements were ever made to maintain the land or the house, but it was never sold, either. All of it is still in my name. I suspect that after fifteen years of neglect that some work will be required to make it presentable, but if it can be done then the land is yours for the Autumn Jubilee, Ferris wheel and all.”

“Oh, Gilbert!” Ruby Gillis exclaimed, the first words he’d heard the girl say the entire meeting. She clasped her hands to her chest and blinked up at him so rapidly he worried there was something wrong with her eyes.

“That is a most generous offer, Mr. Blythe, but I’m not sure –”

“Don’t even finish that thought, Anne Shirley!” Josie commanded. “You know no one in Avonlea has that kind of land to spare.”

“Perhaps we can find an open field –”

“All in favour of using the Blythe orchard for the Apple Fair?”

“We haven’t even seen the land yet!” Anne cried out before the others could voice their vote.

“What if we all took a tour on Sunday? After church? I’ll make arrangements with the Cuthberts to borrow their buggy so we can go together,” Gilbert suggested.

“Alright, all those in favour of touring the Blythe orchard Sunday?” Josie asked, raising her hand high.

“Aye!” the rest of the A.V.I.S. members said.

Looking at the little society, Gilbert watched as Anne stubbornly conceded defeat. Turning towards him, she did not disguise her disdain for his presence, and Gilbert was at a loss as to how to make her like him besides kissing her like he had on that night they promised never happened.

“By unanimous vote, motion carried,” Anne announced, raising the gavel over her head. “See you all on Sunday.”

And with that, the gavel was hammered down and the Avonlea Village Improvement Society meeting was dismissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> I'm back from fam-jam vacay and ready to keep you satiated with some Shirbert goodness. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and seeing some of 'that night' from Gil's point of view. 
> 
> To all who have read and commented and kudos-ed and bookmarked and subscribed, I am eternally in your debt and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
> 
> Next Chapter: Can Gilbert and Anne become friends? Is 'that night' so easy to forget, or will it continue to color their relationship? These answers and more may be found at the Blythe orchard.


	5. The Prodigal Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why didn’t you and your father ever come back?” Anne asked suddenly, as surprised by her question as the rest of the party, especially Gilbert, who appraised her with a stunned expression that only made his eyes too large and beautiful to look at directly. “I just mean,” she stammered, turning her attention towards the fields, “it’s good land, and lots of it. I can see the potential. Why not come back to cultivate it? Or sell it, at least. In fact, with such vast possibility for a hearty bounty, why leave at all?”

As Sunday was Anne’s usual day off, she did not wait for the Barry’s once mass was done. Following the stone path from the chapel, she made her way towards the road where Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert had parked their buggy.

“Good morning, Miss Shirley,” Marilla greeted from her perch at the front of the cart.

“Good morning, Ms. Cuthbert,” Anne said back with a little curtsy before turning her attention to Mr. Cuthbert. “How are you on this glorious September day, Mathew?” Anne asked, petting the mare’s flank as the elder man held the bridles to keep the creature from leaving before all of their party arrived.

“Just fine, Anne,” he replied in his usual quiet way. Anne smiled.

“Thank you so much for sacrificing your fine steed to our cause. The Avonlea Village Improvement Society will be forever in your debt, gracious sir.”

“Oh, right,” he said, nearly chuckling.

Anne had adored Mathew Cuthbert from the start, having met him at an Avonlea picnic when she’d first arrived in the little village. She had been so nervous and wanted so badly to make a good impression on her new neighbours, that Anne had started prattling on without thought or filter and the only person who had been content to sit with her and listen had been dear, darling Mathew Cuthbert. Over the course of the afternoon he had shared his food and made the appropriate gasps and awes as she regaled him with fables of Princess Cordelia, the heroine of her childhood. It had become a routine of theirs since that day, that Anne would share a Princess Cordelia story with the man whenever their paths crossed.

Unfortunately, there was no time to spare for the raven haired royal on this Sunday afternoon.

“All set, Miss Shirley?” Gilbert called. Turning her attention from Mathew to the buggy, Anne saw that the rest of the A.V.I.S. members had loaded into the back and were waiting on her so they might be off.

Flashing Mathew another smile, Anne made haste to join the others. As she moved to climb onto the flatbed, Gilbert took her hand to help her up. His grip was warm, fingers sure and sturdy as they wrapped around her dainty hand, and it was all she could do not to tremble as she remembered with astute clarity the passionate fire those hands could stoke. When she was settled, she practically ripped her hand out of his grip and was sure to keep her face turned away from Gilbert for the duration of the ride to Green Gables.

They made short work of seeing the Cuthberts off at their farm, with Gilbert promising to return well before dinner. When he moved to the front seat to take the reins, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and Anne pretended not to notice how his tanned arms seemed especially attractive with the dove grey cotton bunched at his elbows. She also pretended not to be upset when Ruby Gillis practically pushed Josie Pye over to snag the space beside Gilbert at the front of the buggy. And finally, she pretended that it wasn’t making her irrational with jealousy when Ruby sidled up to Gilbert so that they were touching from shoulder to knee, the young woman looking positively doe-eyed with affection and Gilbert seeming quite content that the pretty Ruby was paying him such devotion.

She wished they’d hit a bump in the road and Ruby might fall out of the wagon.

Alas, there were no ruts on their journey and Gilbert was an expert driver. He led the Cuthbert’s mare gently down the dirt path, conducting the A.V.I.S. members in a catchy harvest-time song that even saw Anne humming along (and of course he had a lovely singing voice, because it seemed that Gilbert Blythe was blessed to be perfect in all things, much to Anne’s eternal exasperation).

“This is where the property begins,” Gilbert announced, cutting off the song and drawing everyone’s attention to the first of several rows of untended apple trees. Much of the fruit had spoiled and fallen from the branches, festering in the thick grass that had been left to grow wild across the land. Anne spotted several colonies of muskrats foraging for the overripe fruit, their little heads peaking up in salute as their wagon passed.

“This will have to be cleared out a bit,” Moody commented, nodding in the general direction of the orchard.

“And some trees will have to be cut down,” Charlie added, noting the rotten trunks that were twisted grey like giants’ bones stuck in the ground after a tumble from their castles in the clouds.

“All of the grounds need…well, some love and attention,” Josie said as politely as possible, grimacing as her eyes scanned the large field, ugly with dead grass and leaves.

“I’m sorry,” Gilbert offered sheepishly. “Like I’d said, I haven’t been back to inspect everything.”

“Why didn’t you and your father ever come back?” Anne asked suddenly, as surprised by her question as the rest of the party, especially Gilbert, who appraised her with a stunned expression that only made his eyes too large and beautiful to look at directly. “I just mean,” she stammered, turning her attention towards the fields, “it’s good land, and lots of it. I can see the potential. Why not come back to cultivate it? Or sell it, at least. In fact, with such vast possibility for a hearty bounty, why leave at all?”

“Oh Anne,” Josie tutted as if the redhead were a child and not a grown woman, “it isn’t very polite to bombard Gilbert with so many _personal_ questions.”

“I don’t mind,” Gilbert said, keeping his focus on the road.

A still silence descended on the little party.

“So…why didn’t you and your father come back?” Moody asked tentatively.

“I suppose it was for the same reason we left,” Gilbert answered, his words careful, measured, and coloured with a bitter emotion Anne couldn’t put her finger on. “When my brother, James, died,” Ruby and Josie both gasped, “that left just me and dad. I think…well, I guess he just didn’t want to stay where there were so many sad memories.”

“But…your mother?” Ruby managed to ask, her words wet with tears as she clasped Gilbert’s arm.

“She died, too. Long ago.”

“Mr. Blythe,” Anne said, turning to regard his profile. His sharp features seemed even more cutting in silhouette with his jaw clenched and mouth pressed in a grim line. “You don’t have to continue,” she offered.

“I said I don’t mind,” he repeated, although his tone insinuated that he might mind a little. Anne did not pursue the argument and neither did the rest of the group. Instead, they waited for Gilbert to either continue or not. “My father had been in the army and for a time was stationed in Alberta,” he went on after a moment. “That’s where he met my mother. We went back west because my grandparents were still there, and my aunt. We left to be with the family we had left.”

“But…now you’re back in Avonlea?” Anne questioned, and even as she said the words she feared she knew what Gilbert’s response would be.

“My dad died four years ago, after my aunt and grandparents,” Gilbert admitted quietly. “The Blythes used to be such a big family. Now I’m the last…the only.”

The sobering statement had the whole group at a loss for words.

They were unsure of how to proceed and didn’t think Gilbert would say any more on the subject, but after a curt sniff, he continued as if he hadn’t revealed his life’s lasting heartache.

“I went away for a while after dad was gone, saw some of the world while working on steamships, made new friends, and then, when I realized what I wanted to do with my life, I decided to come back to Prince Edward Island. I studied at Queen’s and got my teaching certification –” Gilbert paused his story as he brought the horse to a stop.

The society members found themselves in the front yard of the Blythes’ former house, their buggy stopped at the end of a long lawn still fenced in with birch planks that had endured the seasons save for a few rotted laths that had collapsed here and there. A path that looked as if it had once been well trod led up a sweeping knoll to the front door of a charming stone house whose dark front windows made it seem as if it were a mountain troll snoozing the afternoon away.

“This is it,” Gilbert announced, hopping down from the front seat and offering his hand to Ruby as the other lads slipped from the flatbed and gave the girls assistance. “It was just a coincidence,” he continued, “that Avonlea needed a schoolmaster immediately after I graduated. That’s really the only reason I ended up back here.”

“I think it pure luck in our favour, rather than a coincidence,” Josie said primly, dusting dirt off her skirt as she moved to stand at his side and flash him a coy look.

“Oh yes! We were so lucky to get you indeed, Gilbert!” Ruby agreed, giggling behind a gloved hand, a similar playfulness in her voice to match the coquettish contemplation of Josie Pye.

“Um, thank you,” the young man said, nodding politely at the two before clearing his throat a tad awkwardly as he stuck out his thumb and gestured over his shoulder. “Shall we go take a look?”

And with that, the Avonlea Village Improvement Society was off.

Because she took her presidential duties seriously, Anne fished a small notebook and pen from her coat pocket and began drawing up a list of all of the tasks required to make the land suitable for the Autumn Jubilee. It would take weeks of work to get the land cleared up, but it was a doable venture if everyone in the village was willing to give some of their time to the task. Drawing a map with estimated measurements (she counted her steps as she walked along the fields) Anne was able to imagine a few plans for organizing the event and intended to draw them up properly for deliberation at the next A.V.I.S. meeting.

Satisfied, the redhead closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her lungs filling with sweet September air. In her imagination she could see the Autumn Jubilee exactly as it would be in seven week’s time. Traversing her musings, Anne could hear the clamour of crowds milling about, ladies bartering at the craft tables, farmers bragging about their prize-winning livestock, children goading each other on as they played the games. She could see the lanterns lighting the web of pathways that led through stalls and tents, smell the warm cider and taste the sweet sugary flesh of a roasted apple on the tip of her tongue. And the centerpiece of it all, the colossal Ferris wheel, spinning gaily over and over, letting the little people of Avonlea feel as one with the birds, their fingertips barely brushing the edge of heaven.

“This will do splendidly,” she said to herself, and resolved to find Mr. Blythe and thank him for the gift of his property. Of course, she would be thanking him as the A.V.I.S. president, which was only proper, and just because she was grateful to his loaning of the land didn’t mean she was ready to forgive him for coercing her into letting him join the group in the first place.

Bypassing Josie and Charlie who were engaged in a heated argument over which of them would oversee the clearing of the area, Anne walked across the field in search of Gilbert. When she wasn’t able to find him, she ignored the pang of panic that pinched her heart and made her breath hitch. Of course she wasn’t worried for Gilbert, only concerned that he may have rudely abandoned the A.V.I.S. group in the middle of his fallow land.

Yet even as the paltry excuse crossed her mind Anne knew it wasn’t true. She may have thought Gilbert Blythe to be many wicked things, but bad mannered was not one of them. He hadn’t deserted the group, surely. So where was he?

The most obvious place to look first was the house, and so Anne approached the silent stone structure, easily noting that someone had kicked dirt off their boots at the entryway and that the door was ajar. Ever curious, she scraped her boots along the worn wood porch and let herself inside.

The house smelled cold and damp, too long denied the warmth of a fire and family to keep the harsh chill of the wilderness at bay. Though she knew no one lived there, Anne still felt impolite as she crossed the threshold, an uninvited guest come to sniff around the house’s secrets. She didn’t dare go up the stairs, unsure if the steps would even hold her weight, they looked so brittle. When she crossed through the kitchen, she was dismayed to see a fine china tea set covered in dust and cobwebs, the dregs of a forgotten tea sitting dry and dirty at the bottom. The little study she discovered held a desk covered in paper so brittle Anne was certain it would turn to dust if she dared touch it. The next room, the parlor, was a quaint chamber with a fireplace, hand crafted side tables, and several pieces of upholstered furniture covered in dustsheets.

And standing still as a statue near the hearthside, was Gilbert.

He was staring at a photograph atop the cold mantel and didn’t seem to notice Anne as she approached, so transfixed was he by the people in the picture that the seventeen-year old’s curiosity wouldn’t allow her to leave until she knew what intrigued Gilbert so. Anne moved to stand beside him and looked.

The portrait was of a handsome couple.

The man was dressed in a fine looking jacket, one hand tucked in the front pocket of his trousers so that the chain of a gold watch could be seen peeking from his dark vest. A carnation was nestled smartly in his breast pocket, no doubt to accompany the wreath of carnations adorning the head of the woman seated at his side. Her dark curls spun around the crown of white petals and cascaded over her shoulders, a most scandalous hairdo for what was surely a wedding portrait.

Anne knew after only a few moments of exploring the people in the photograph that they must be Gilbert’s parents. The man had Gilbert’s brow and nose. The woman had given Gilbert the sweet roundness of her chin, and her same wild dark curls, and the dimpled charm of her smile.

Anne wondered which of them had pledged Gilbert his hazel eyes.

Eyes, she noticed at last, that were unblinking and sad as they regarded the newlyweds in the picture, as if desperate to drink in their image to satiate a thirst most exigent.

“Mr. Blythe –”

“It’s funny,” he said, his voice cracking in a way that made him seem so much younger than a man of nineteen. “I’ve been an orphan for four years and there are times when it all still feels so fresh, like he died just yesterday. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

And it was in that moment that Anne’s heart at last opened up to this man.

She knew that it would be impossible to stay cross with Gilbert over stolen kisses between strangers when he had laid bare his heart to her and proved that he wasn’t a stranger at all. Gilbert Blythe was a kindred spirit, a precious soul that knew grief as well as she did, adrift in a sea of people, seeking harbour with one who would give shelter from the horrid typhoons of black despair and loneliness.

And maybe that was why she’d been drawn to him from first sight. Perhaps her soul knew something her heart and mind could not comprehend that night at Aunt Josephine’s. Perhaps it was meant to be that Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe should meet.

And now that they had met ( _properly_ ), she did not possess the conceit to leave him lost in the storm of his troubles.

“Having been an orphan all my life, I must be honest and report that there is no getting used to it,” Anne confessed solemnly. She kept her gaze on the wedding photo, affording Gilbert some privacy if he wished to cry, but also giving him her support by being with him as he traversed his pain. “The ache never really leaves you, because one moment you belonged to someone and they belonged to you, and the next they were gone, and you were alone.

“You said you left for the sea after you buried your father. I understand why. It’s because you’re always seeking a way to fill the hole in your heart, the wound that never seems to scab over. All you crave is a balm to the agony in your soul, anything to cleanse it of the loneliness that is now as much a part of you as your face, or hands, or hair.”

“You’ve known a lot of pain, haven’t you, Miss Shirley,” Gilbert said, and it was not a question. Anne finally dared to peek at Gilbert and found him looking at her with his thoughtful hazel eyes, their dark warmth as easing as the September sunshine that played in the leaves of the Barry’s sugar maple.

“Maybe so,” she agreed, “but I like to think that I’ve known such pain in order to appreciate the great joys of my life. After all, how can one know what true elation is if they don’t have a deep heartache to compare it to?”

“And have you had many true elations?” Gilbert wondered.

“Of course!” Anne exclaimed gladly, smiling at the man beside her. “Coming to Avonlea has been such an amazing happiness for me, and the Barrys are truly the gentlest family I have ever belonged to. And then there is my dear Diana, who I miss with every beat of my heart, but of course, that will make our reunion all the sweeter.

“I think that books are my purest joy, for when I discovered them I discovered the very key to my salvation; I am never trapped as long as I have books. And then there are the little joys, of course, like strawberries, and flowers, and puffed sleeves, and –”

Anne stopped her list, miraculously her mind having caught up to her tongue before she got too carried away.

“And?” Gilbert probed, eager to know what things on this earth brought Anne such rapture. He was especially curious which of those particular joys was making her blush, cheeks flushed pink in the cold grey of the abandoned home.

“Well, I do very much find a carefree freedom in dancing…and I did enjoy three dances with a most capable partner not so long ago,” she admitted bashfully, turning away from Gilbert.

Were he still a boy, Gilbert was sure he would have hooted and tossed his hat in the air at Anne’s words.

“Can we be friends, Miss Shirley?” he asked, almost begged, too glad for the possible shift in their acquaintanceship to let the moment pass by without at least asking her if she might change her mind about him. Her words about loneliness and joy were the exact likeness of his own thoughts on the matter, and he knew as she did her best to comfort him that Anne was someone he was meant to meet and know and love. “I think you and I were made to be the very best of friends.”

“Friends hardly meet the way we did, Mr. Blythe,” Anne argued.

“But _you_ insisted we forget that night. So, let’s forget it and start over,” Gilbert beseeched. Taking a step back, he cleared his throat and held out his hand to Anne. “How do you do? My name is Gilbert Blythe. I’m the new schoolmaster at Avonlea.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Anne declared, looking at Gilbert as if she were both annoyed and endeared by his pantomime.

“Not so ridiculous that I’m a bad influence on my students, I hope,” he replied as if engaging in a normal conversation. “Now, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he continued, eyes darting down to his open and waiting hand. “Who are you, miss? Can you tell me your name?”

Part of her didn’t want to make the move, afraid of what the shift in their relationship would mean. In the little time she had known him as her Moonlight Prince and Mr. Blythe, it had been easy to both yearn for and loathe him, her feelings tipping a scale in either one extreme or the other. To be _Gilbert’s_ friend…well, it would make the scales equal.

She’d never had an equal before.

It could be nice.

Decided, Anne took Gilbert’s hand and gave it a steadfast shake.

“Salutations, Mr. Blythe. I’m Anne Shirley, lady’s maid to the Barry family,” she greeted.

“Nice to meet you,” Gilbert replied, returning her firm shake. “May I call you Anne?”

“…you may,” Anne said after a few heartbeats.

Gilbert’s eyes were dazzling as they looked on her with blissful warmth.

“And will you call me Gilbert?” he implored.

“If that is your wish,” Anne groused good naturedly, rolling her eyes as if he were repeating a joke she did not find funny. But the smile Gilbert graced her with was so radiant that Anne was certain he could light up every bulb in the whole of Aunt Josephine’s mansion without needing a single spark of electricity. That smile was truly going to be her undoing (as it had already proven to be so many times already). 

“There is no greater wish I have in my heart,” Gilbert said, wondering if Anne remembered when she had said those words to him in the Barry’s garden. From the way she shook her head at him with incredulous amusement, he thought she might.

“Very well…Gilbert,” Anne said, tasting the sound and shape of his name on her tongue as thoughtfully as she’d tasted and traced his lips that night in the conservatory.

It was decadent!

“Welcome back to Avonlea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank one and all for taking the time to enjoy this story. The kudos and comments and bookmarks have been making my days :)
> 
> Next Chapter: Anne and Gilbert continue to navigate their new friendship with a little help from Green Gables.


	6. The Boarder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe in this other-Avonlea my dad and I stayed,” Gilbert suggested, adding to Anne’s musings. “Then other-Gilbert and other-Anne could grow up to be neighbours and go to school together.”
> 
> “Where they would be bitterly competitive rivals for top marks,” Anne suggested with a prim turn of her chin.
> 
> “Not bitterly, surely,” Gilbert chuckled. “I can’t speak for other-Anne, but there would be no bitter feelings on other-Gilbert’s part.”
> 
> “Maybe,” Anne conceded softly, a quiet companionable feeling suddenly shrouding the pair like a blanket shared before a fire. “I truly was very nearly Anne of Green Gables,” she confessed gently.

_“Did you hear that?” his pretty Carrots asked, pulling her lips away from his to turn towards the closed conservatory doors._

_“It’s just the rain,” Gilbert said._

_He couldn’t say when the deluge began, but it occurred to him that the constant hammering of water on glass must have been happening for a while. It hadn’t managed to overpower the wicked '_ ba-bump _’ of his heartbeat in his ears, the wild tempo like his own private symphony as he continued to kiss and touch and simply know this fiery woman._

_She was still preoccupied with the door, and that wouldn’t do._

_Gilbert swept his hands up her back until they were cupped lovingly around her nape as he trailed kisses along her temple. The smell of irises clung to her hair and it was as if Gilbert was drunk on the scent, burying his nose against the little wisps of red that had escaped her chignon when he’d been unable to resist the temptation of carding his fingers through the soft strands._

_“Carrots…” he implored, not sure what he was pleading for, but beseeching her all the same. The little lady was generous and gave him mercy, returning her mouth to his. But her sudden drive back into his arms was more energized than Gilbert had expected, and he gasped when she kissed him again._

_Her tongue, slick and pink and perfectly tiny, grazed the plump pillow of his bottom lip._

_Gilbert remembered the one time in his life he had fainted._

_He’d been sixteen, and the Primrose had docked in Boston for three days. During their leave, Gilbert had forced his friend, Bash, to a dentist if only to cease the man’s complaining about a chipped tooth. When the dentist had begun to prepare Bash for the minor surgery, he’d taken out a needle the size of a grown man’s pointer finger. Why the middle-aged man holding the instrument (_ sharp terrifying weapon! _) to his friend’s face started Gilbert’s descent, he didn’t know. It was just that one moment Gilbert was standing nice and sturdy, holding Bash’s hat, and the next he’d gone lightheaded, his lungs taking in too much air and yet not enough all at once, and the room had started to spin and his knees became jelly and the world was blurring around the edges before turning upside down then going dark. He’d remained passed out on the floor for the entirety of Bash’s surgery and had to be revived with smelling salts. It was an event that Bash continued to mark as a highlight of their friendship. Gilbert, while good natured over the incident, had promised himself that he would never faint again._

_And yet, here he was, nineteen and in the arms of the most beautiful woman, a woman who wanted him as much as he wanted her, and just like that his head was going dizzy, and his knees were turning to jelly, and the world was blurring around the edges._

_And every vertiginous sensation was all because his clever Carrot’s tongue took the tiniest taste of him._

_If he hadn’t been able to hear whatever it was she’d thought was coming from the other side of the wall of their snug sanctuary before, he certainly had no hope of hearing the second sharp cry that caused Carrots to flee from his embrace and start towards the door._

_“Just wait here a moment,” she said._

_“Don’t go,” he panted, urgent as he followed after her._

_“I won’t leave for long and I’ll come straight back,” she assured, hand reaching for the polished doorknob. Before her ungloved fingers could twist the wretched handle, Gilbert seized them in his own grip and, frantically, twisted Carrots around so that her back slammed against the door. Her mouth was open in protest, but he wouldn’t hear her words because he was determined to kiss them right out of her._

_His hands cupped her face and tilted her chin just right so that he could drink from her, his tongue needing to know if her lips were as sweet as oranges, like he imagined._

_He wasn’t disappointed when he discovered they tasted like strawberries._

_Carrots was eager to return the embrace, one hand holding him close by the waist while the other crept up the back of his neck to navigate his curls. As her nails played along his scalp and pulled, oh so delicately, at his dark hair, Gilbert had to supress the urge to press himself to her completely and let her feel his full ardour. He groaned instead, needing to tell her somehow that she should never stop touching him._

_“I’ll only be a minute,” she promised when they finally parted, determined to leave. Gilbert tried to distract her with a series of sweet kisses along her jaw, one hand cupping her face so that his thumb could play along the delicate blossom of her cheek._

_But she would not be diverted and slowly pushed him away until he was an arm’s length from her, her hands clasped over his heart. He looked into her eyes, the pupils blown wide and rimmed with only the thinnest line of dark sapphire shining up at him and he wondered if she could see his desire for her as plainly as the nose on his face._

_He didn’t want to let her go._

_He didn’t want either of them to leave Ms. Barry’s conservatory for the rest of their days._

_But he knew that was impossible._

_His fire sprite – his sweet, strawberry tasting Carrots – was not something that he could keep caged. Her wild abandon as they’d danced and kissed told him that much about her, and he wanted to know so much more._

_So he’d have to be brave and let her go._

_Tenderly, Gilbert raised her hands from his chest to his lips and planted a warm kiss across her knuckles before taking a step back and releasing her. She gifted him one of her delightful smiles and opened the door, the light spilling from the hall into the dark conservatory seeming almost white in its harsh splendidness._

_“I’ll come back,” she said._

_“I know.”_

_And with those parting words, Carrots slipped out of the door and was gone._

_She never came back…_

**~*~**

Gilbert couldn’t help but whistle as he watched Anne expertly drive the Barry’s carriage up to the steps of the schoolhouse.

“Running away?” he asked as he approached her tentatively.

It had been two weeks since they’d made peace with one another in the Blythe’s old homestead, and while it had certainly eased most of the tension between them, there was still something anxious in the newness of their relationship. Anne and Gilbert were friends now, that was certain, but they were friends who had kissed and even though they swore to forget that night, it was easier said than done. Still, Gilbert was determined not to ruin what he and Anne were slowly building: a friendship based on trust, kindness, a fair bit of humour, and compatible disposition. He hoped that once the bashful tension had eased he could begin to court Anne properly.

If she would let him.

When she smiled at him as he came to stand beside the carriage, eyes bright, cheeks pink from the wind, and red hair dotted with wildflowers, he thought maybe there was a chance that she might let him kiss her again, and that hope warmed him more than any coat ever could.

“Ferrying precious cargo, actually,” Anne retorted from her perch, jutting her chin over to the brook where Minnie May was bidding a theatrical farewell to her friends.

“Ah,” he replied. “That’s right, she’s off to Halifax. Why so far away?” Gilbert wondered, hoping he didn’t sound wounded as he asked. After all, if Minnie May was bound for Nova Scotia, then Anne was sure to be accompanying her.

“There’s an agricultural symposium that Mr. Barry received a personal invitation to attend. He’s taking the whole family with him,” Anne answered.

“And has Mr. Barry been informed that Minnie May might not find lectures on fertilizer terribly stimulating?” Gilbert asked gravely. The pair shared a joyous chuckle at Gilbert’s words, each imagining the strife that the ten-year-old was sure to cause her father. “How long is this symposium?”

“Only a week,” Anne sighed, “but Mrs. Barry has cousins in Halifax and she thought it would be a treat to extend the visit and do some shopping, possibly try and introduce Minnie May to the manners of polite society.” Anne cringed immediately after she made that last comment and Gilbert mirrored her dire expression.

“The poor denizens of Halifax won’t know what hit them.”

“No they won’t!” Anne agreed, laughing outright at Gilbert’s keen understanding of the horror that could be Minnie May Barry.

“And how long can I expect my pupil to be missing lessons?” he wondered as he raised a hand to pet the old mare’s mane.

“A month.”

That shocked Gilbert.

He stilled nuzzling the horse, his fingers curling in the coarse dark hair of the animal’s mane as if he hoped to hold it with him in the schoolyard and, by extension, hold Anne, too. He hadn’t expected the jaunt to Nova Scotia to be so long, and he felt the iron weight of dread settle low in his belly as he envisioned all the days that would pass without seeing Anne.

Thirty days without her smile. Thirty days without her laughter and wit. Thirty days with no wildflowers, or stories, or happy humming, or red hair in braids.

Looking up, Gilbert hurried to memorize Anne. Her chin was tucked against her shoulder for she was still chuckling at their previous banter. He adored that chin, not too round or too pointed, with a dabbling of freckles that cascaded across the smooth pale skin. Her nose was a wonderfully straight slope that only turned up just the perfect little bit at the end, giving the whole of her face a noble quality, like one of the Greek sculptures he’d seen at the British Museum. Her eyes still reminded him of the sea, and her mouth still seemed as orange blossoms that he knew tasted like strawberries.

And her hair…

Gilbert could write poetry for days about her hair.

He was sure that his harried study of her wouldn’t be sufficient to see him through the next month, but as it was, Anne had to leave and he had to let her go.

Again.

“Well, it’ll be a shame not to see you for so long,” he dared to say, hoping he didn’t sound too despondent, though he certainly felt it.

“What are you talking about?” Anne asked, regarding him with a peculiar expression. “You’ll see me on Sunday at church, at least, and all of the A.V.I.S. meetings besides.”

Gilbert blinked, confused.

“But aren’t you going to Halifax with the Barrys?”

“Of course not,” Anne exclaimed as if it should be obvious. “Mrs. Barry’s cousins have much more experienced ladies’ maids to tend to her and Minnie May. Besides, I have the Autumn Jubilee preparations to supervise.”

Suddenly, the iron weight that had sunk in his belly began to melt, filling Gilbert’s being with a hot, excited joy that there would be no drought of Anne Shirley. He would still see her, perhaps not every day, but he would not be deprived for a whole month of her delightful presence.

And that’s when it occurred to Gilbert that, with the Barrys gone, Anne would be alone.

“Have dinner with me,” he requested impulsively, managing not to wince at how overeager he sounded.

Anne shot Gilbert a wide-eyed look of confused disbelief and was about to answer, and it was most certainly going to be in the negative, before Gilbert managed to cut her off.

“I mean, me and the Cuthberts,” he clarified. “Come to Green Gables this evening and join us for dinner. Please.”

“…I shouldn’t,” Anne replied cautiously, but it made Gilbert smile all the same. After all, it wasn’t ‘no’.

“Oh, come on,” he goaded, moving closer to her so that he might look upon the red head as Romeo had gazed at his Juliet on her balcony.

“Won’t the Cuthberts mind? I mean, it’s such short notice. And Green Gables is their home, so shouldn’t they be extending the invitations to dinner rather than you?”

“The Cuthberts trust my judgement in invitation requests, I promise,” Gilbert assured, and it wasn’t a lie, not really.

The Cuthberts did trust him in all things, and he was sure that extended to dinner offers. He’d just never invited anyone to dinner before. Still, Gilbert wasn’t about to let that dissuade him. After all, like his father so often said: it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

“Marilla is an excellent cook,” he continued, “and I know Mathew won’t mind having you. Say you’ll come.”

The minutes that passed in contemplative silence felt like years to Gilbert as he studied Anne’s face, hoping to read her reply in her eyes before she gave it words. He refused to get his hopes up when she smiled her lovely little smile that made her cheeks blush and her nose crinkle, so the surprise he felt when she answered was genuine and utterly delightful.

“Alright.”

**~*~**

Green Gables was, to Gilbert, the ideal homestead.

The farm itself was well tended, with Mathew and Jerry ensuring that everything ran smoothly and on schedule. The animals were few but well cared for. The garden was lush with vegetation and the lawn was neatly trimmed. Then there was the house, a two-storey whitewashed farmhouse with gables as green as emeralds. Marilla Cuthbert was the uncontested master of the quaint abode. Under her rule, the floors were always waxed, the lamps lit with economic calculation, the pantry was full, the woodpile remained stocked, and every surface was kept free from dust. The way she commanded the household reminded Gilbert of his former boss on the Primrose, with orders being given in a stern pitch that offered no room for bartering. Even with her hands wrist deep in dough, Marilla was able to easily command Gilbert about.

“Take down the Royal Doulton from the cabinet in the parlor and set the table,” she told the young man after he had finished scrubbing the dining room table to within an inch of his life. “But get the tablecloth first, the one with red asters, and be sure to wash your hands before handling it.”

“Yes, Marilla,” Gilbert obliged, happy to do all of her bidding as she was being kind enough not to kick him out on his ears for inviting a girl ( _unmarried, unchaperoned, woman!_ ) to dinner with no warning whatsoever.

Though he had not been living at Green Gables for very long, Gilbert had developed an incredibly close bond with the Cuthberts and would even go so far as to say that they doted on him like a son, and he returned the sentiment. Since his arrival, Mathew and Marilla had been like the family Gilbert had been wishing desperately to reclaim in the wake of his father’s death. Sometimes Gilbert thought it Providence that he should end up boarding with two people who had known John Blythe and had clearly admired him.

Marilla in particular enjoyed sharing stories of John in his younger, rapscallion days, and Gilbert was glad to repay her kindness in tales of his own, recounting what had become of John once he’d moved out west. He’d been surprised to learn that Marilla and his father had once been close friends (Gilbert suspected more than friends) and that the course of his father’s life could have been very different if he’d remained in Avonlea. 

Mathew didn’t talk as much as Marilla, though he did seem to like Gilbert’s company, and the extra assistance around the farm was certainly appreciated. When the two men did speak it was about farming and, lately, about Anne Shirley. After returning from his orchard that Sunday two weeks ago, Gilbert had learned that Mathew and Anne were actually good chums. In fact, when he’d rushed back to Green Gables, after closing up the school for the day, to inform the brother and sister of their dinner guest, Mathew had smiled brightly and even helped to smooth things over with Marilla who had not taken the news as eagerly as Gilbert had hoped.

Once the table was set and things were to Marilla’s satisfaction, she gave him leave to prepare for dinner. Excited, Gilbert took the stairs two at a time and bounded into his room. He didn’t have much to wear, but a clean shirt certainly spruced his appearance up a bit. Clipping his suspenders in place, Gilbert tried to make sense of his hair, but his curls refused to be tamed and the most he could do was pat them down a bit with water and hope for the best.

“Erm,” Mathew Cuthbert said, knocking lightly on Gilbert’s open door. “She uh…she’s coming up the drive now.”

Grinning, Gilbert bounded past Mathew, clapping him on the shoulder, and rushed down the stairs.

“Gilbert Blythe there is no running in this house!” Marilla called, still in the kitchen.

“Sorry,” he answered, stopping at the front door and catching his breath. He took a moment to smooth out his shirt, checking that it was all tucked in, and even made another hopeless attempt at managing his hair before there was a knock at the door.

With a genuine enthusiasm, Gilbert opened the door and greeted Anne.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” she parroted. “I’m not too early?”

“You’re right on time,” he said, allowing a moment to take Anne in. She was wearing a dress as green as the gables, perfectly suited to her fair complexion and red hair. There was a tuft of ivory lace at the collar of her dress and a dainty pink brooch was pinned directly at the base of her throat. Her hair was pulled back into a single braid that trailed down her spine, held together by a ribbon of the same lace as on her dress. She did not come empty handed, for her arms were cradling a dish covered with a glass lid that had gone opaque with steam. 

Clearing her throat, Anne redirected Gilbert’s attention to her eyes, and she shifted her brow in amused curiosity.

“Oh! Please come in,” he requested, stepping aside so she could cross the threshold.

“Hello, Mathew,” Anne said to the older man. “Could I trouble you?” she asked, holding out the dish.

“Thank you, Anne,” he said, taking the serving bowl. “What have you brought us?”

“Shepherd’s pie.”

“Lovely.”

Gilbert helped Anne remove her coat and took her hat, hanging both by the entrance while Mathew took Anne to the dining room.

“Everything looks just as I’ve always imagined,” Anne commented, touring around the room, taking in everything from the hangings on the wall to the rug on the floor. “It’s all just so splendid.”

“And what is it you find so grand, Miss Shirley?” Marilla asked as she emerged from the kitchen to join the gathering.

“Oh,” Anne stuttered, always a bit at a loss when it came to Marilla Cuthbert. “Just everything about Green Gables, I suppose. I think the cross stitch here,” and Anne moved to point out a framed craft of the alphabet, “is most remarkable; certainly, the finest needlework I’ve ever seen. And your table! You didn’t have to go through the trouble of bringing out your fine china for me, Ms. Cuthbert.”

“You may call me Marilla, Miss Shirley –”

“Well then you must call me Anne! Only, when you do, please say Anne with an ‘e’. So many people forget the ‘e’.”

Marilla appraised Anne with her staunch stare and Anne met her with silent, nervous poise. It made Gilbert wonder why it seemed that Anne and Marilla had been in this sort of standoff before.

“Anne made shepherd’s pie,” Mathew said, hoping to dull the tension. Marilla turned from the seventeen-year-old and regarded her brother, finally noticing the bowl in his arms.

“That’s very kind of you, Anne,” she said, taking the crock from her brother and placing it in the centre of the table. “Dinner won’t be much longer. Gilbert, if you’d like to take Anne to the –”

“Oh please, let me help you, Marilla,” Anne exclaimed. “I’m well versed in kitchens and dinner preparations.”

“But you’re our guest,” Marilla argued.

“And your guest would like nothing more than to be of assistance to you as you prepare our bounteous feast. Please, Marilla. I can help.”

Gilbert didn’t miss the desperate pleading tone to Anne’s words, nor did he miss the guilt that crinkled at the corners of Marilla’s blue eyes, and he wondered what history lay between the two women that they would regard each other so. With barely a nod, Marilla acquiesced to Anne and led her to the kitchen. Though he was disappointed to lose time with her, when Anne looked back at him over her shoulder and scrunched her face in the most adorable expression of thrilled victory, he couldn’t remain despondent.

Anne was happy and that was all that mattered.

For the next half hour, Gilbert and Mathew shared the fire in the sitting room, Gilbert marking his students’ papers and Mathew reviewing the prices for his crops. Every now and then the companionable silence was broken by Mathew asking Gilbert for help with calculations or Gilbert sharing a humorous passage from the essays he was reading. It hardly seemed as if time had passed before Marilla was calling them to the table.

As Anne was Gilbert’s guest, he sat beside her while Marilla took the head of the table and Mathew had his usual spot at his sister’s left. The table was laden with dishes of vegetables, fresh steaming buns with rosemary, roasted potatoes, a tureen near overflowing with gravy, and at the centre, beside Anne’s shepherd’s pie, was a mouth-watering rack of lamb, cooked and seasoned to scrumptious perfection.

“Well then, Gilbert, will you say Grace?” Marilla asked.

The little group reached out and took hands. Gilbert couldn’t help playfully squeezing Anne’s fingers and she returned the gesture with a firm tap of her toes against his shins. Trying not to call attention to their antics, Gilbert cleared his throat and spoke.

“Dear Lord –”

“Gilbert,” Anne interrupted, drawing everyone’s attention to her. “I’m sorry, but do you think you could say ‘Dear gracious heavenly Father’? It just sounds so much more romantical, don’t you think?”

“Prayer is hardly a place for romance, Anne,” Marilla chided.

“But we are speaking to God, thanking him for this life. Don’t you think that deserves a little bit of romance? Or, if not that, then certainly a show of devout gratitude through reverent and ardent words.”

No one at the table had a remark for Anne’s passionate speech. While Marilla and Mathew looked at the young woman with a mixture of perplexity and amusement, Gilbert simply smiled. He was happy that Anne was in his home, beside him, holding his hand, and all she asked in return was a few flowery words in honour of the Lord. He would do that, and so much more, for her.

“Dear gracious heavenly Father,” he began, impressed with his own mastery of his impulses when Anne squeezed his fingers as he repeated her words and he _didn’t_ pull her into his arms so that he could kiss the joy on her lips. With the greatest strength of self-control, Gilbert completed the prayer and the little group prepared to eat.

“Thank you, Gilbert,” Anne said, taking a biscuit from the plate he held out to her.

“Not at all,” he replied. “Would you pass the carrots?”

And when the pair broke out into peels of shared laughter, they never were able to tell the Cuthberts what was so funny.

**~*~**

After dinner was eaten and the table cleared, Gilbert offered to drive Anne back to the Barry’s.

“I think I’ll walk,” she said as she pinned her hat to her hair. “There won’t be many more warm evenings left and I’m determined to enjoy every one of them.”

“I’ll walk you back, then,” Gilbert said, putting on his coat before assisting Anne with hers.

“Thank you again for dinner,” Anne called to the Cuthberts, a chorus of ‘ _good evenings’_ following her and Gilbert out the door. They started at a lively pace, the chilly twilight invigorating them after a lovely dinner. “I just adore the autumn,” Anne said as they walked down the lane, her head tilted back as she inhaled deeply, as if she could sense the full bouquet of the season. “Do you enjoy living with the Cuthberts?” she asked Gilbert out of the blue.

“I do. They are very kind to me,” he said, the endearment he held towards the pair plain in the tone of his voice.

“I’m glad,” Anne said. “In another life, Green Gables would have been my home,” she shared. “And isn’t that just divine! The thought of another Anne Shirley getting to live at Green Gables with Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert; able to be free and go to school and have adventures every hour!”

And then, with a burst of unpredictable energy, Anne started skipping down the dirt path, smiling and laughing as she bounded forward, leaving Gilbert helpless but to survey her merry jig. He did not mask the adoration on his face as he watched Anne twirl before him, spinning tales of this other Anne-girl, painting a perfectly charming picture of a mischievous redhead who would climb kind trees, and converse with flowers, and traipse across rooftops, and be the top student in her class.

“Maybe in this other-Avonlea my dad and I stayed,” Gilbert suggested, adding to Anne’s musings. “Then other-Gilbert and other-Anne could grow up to be neighbours and go to school together.”

“Where they would be bitterly competitive rivals for top marks,” Anne suggested with a prim turn of her chin.

“Not bitterly, surely,” Gilbert chuckled. “I can’t speak for other-Anne, but there would be no bitter feelings on other-Gilbert’s part.”

“Maybe,” Anne conceded softly, a quiet companionable feeling suddenly shrouding the pair like a blanket shared before a fire. “I truly was very nearly Anne of Green Gables,” she confessed gently.

And just like that, the reason for Anne and Marilla’s strange tension all made sense.

“What happened?” he asked.

“They changed their minds,” Anne said, and even now it was difficult to keep the grief wrought from that decision from choking her. “When I arrived at the station there was a message that the Cuthberts had decided not to pursue an adoption. They’d hired Jerry Baynard instead and felt they no longer needed a child to help on the farm. And it was probably for the best, too, since I think they had wanted a boy and would likely have been most disappointed in skinny, homely me showing up on their doorstep with my freckles and wretched red hair.”

“Your hair is lovely,” Gilbert protested.

“You call me ‘carrots’ because of it,” Anne stated as if that justified why she hated the flame locks.

“But not because I don’t like your hair,” he countered. Anne scoffed and crossed her arms.

“If you try and claim that calling me ‘carrots’ is a term of endearment, so help me, Gilbert Blythe, I’ll start calling you ‘turnip-head’ and see how you like being nicknamed after a root vegetable.”

And Gilbert couldn’t help laughing at Anne’s silly threat, thinking that if she might love him, or even like him just a little, he’d let her call him anything she wanted.

“So how did you end up with the Barrys?”

“Mere chance,” she said. “They were looking for a lady’s maid at the same time I was looking for a way to stay in Avonlea. I had experience in housekeeping and all of the duties of being a lady’s maid I could learn, so Mrs. Barry hired me on a two-week trial and, after I passed, I was allowed to stay.”

“Oh Anne –”

“Don’t,” she begged, the atmosphere around them changing into something glum. “They have been a good family to me.”

“Good employers, you mean.”

“They are both.”

They walked along the lane in silence for a while.

“Do you like what you do?” Gilbert finally asked, being as delicate as possible with the subject.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Anne,” he sighed, stopping in the middle of the path and compelling her to do the same. When she looked at him, a calm but brisk breeze swept a few red hairs across her face and Gilbert’s palm itched to push them back. He refrained, however, and opted to continue speaking instead. “You’re smart. Honestly, I think you are one of the most intelligent persons I’ve ever met. You have an unparalleled imagination, an inquisitive mind, and a truly brilliant aptitude for learning.”

“Are you trying to make me blush?” she whinged, tucking her chin into her chest and avoiding his scrutiny.

“I’m trying to be honest with you.”

“So what is it you’re trying to say?”

Boldly, Gilbert reached out and took Anne’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face to look at him.

“You were made for more than the life of a lady’s maid, Anne Shirley. You have much more to give the world and you’ll never learn what that much more is if you remain a servant of the Barry’s.”

“I have never known anything else but service,” Anne whispered, the sound quiet and broken.

“Doesn’t mean it’s what you want. Unless, it is?”

“I hate you!” Anne cried, startling Gilbert as she ripped her chin out of his hold. She started marching down the lane away from him, taking a few long, angry strides before turning back to him with a pained expression. “How can you do that?!”

“Do what? What have I done?” Gilbert wondered, confused at how he’d managed to set her off again.

“Know me so well when you were just a stranger a month ago!”

Anne stood still in the middle of the road, chest heaving as she fought to catch her breath just as she tried to catch her temper. Resolutely, Gilbert approached her much as he might approach a doe in the woods, his steps slow and light, his hands loose at his sides, and his eyes never parting from hers.

“Anne –”

“I have lived and worked for the Barrys since I was thirteen,” she said, lips quivering and voice sounding small and trapped. “They have known me for four years and not once have any of them, even my darlingest Diana who is my precious kindred spirit, ever thought that I desperately yearn for a life of my own choosing. And I was just so elated to be wanted by a good, decent family for the first time that I think even I forgot what my true life’s passions are.”

Gilbert was finally standing before Anne, an arm’s length all that separated them. It seemed that space was always coming between them, but Gilbert hoped he might be able to bridge the gap, one precious inch at a time.

“And what are your passions?” he asked.

“To go to school. To learn everything. To write novels and recite poetry and master maths and read maps and chart the stars. To teach. Oh Gilbert, you have no idea how desperately I wish to be a teacher.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Everything,” Anne replied as if the answer was as simple as that. The ire had fled her spirit and now she seemed just a dejected girl, deflated and miserable. Her eyes trained on her boots, Anne turned back down the path and continued towards her home.

Gilbert kept pace with her, almost starting so many sentences before closing his mouth as he reconsidered what he could possibly say to all that Anne had confessed. He certainly couldn’t ask her to quit the Barrys and be with him, not when he couldn’t promise her a home or security. In fact, all Gilbert could promise Anne was himself, and all he was at the moment was a humble schoolmaster.

And like a lightbulb flaring with light at the first spark of electricity, Gilbert had an idea.

“I’ll help you,” he said, hopeful and excited.

“Don’t Gilbert –”

“I’ll help you,” Gilbert vowed, stopping to take Anne’s hands in his own and hold them to his chest just as he had that night in the conservatory, as if he were trying to clasp her to him with the earnest beating of his heart. “If you want to be a teacher, I will get you there. I’ll tutor you after school, on the weekends, after church. I’ll assign you readings and equations and give you quizzes and essays. I can help you prepare for the Queen’s entrance examinations. You can go to college, maybe in two or three years, and become a teacher and come back to Avonlea as the new schoolmistress.”

It was a pretty promise he painted, and it made Anne’s heart flutter with hope at the possibilities. Still…

“Where would that leave you?” she asked breathlessly.

“I don’t intend to teach here forever,” Gilbert assured. “I have my own aspirations to chase.”

She wanted to ask him what he meant, to explain his dreams, but they had started walking again and the next turned corner saw the Barry’s house coming into view and the time of their parting was upon them.

“Thank you for walking me home,” she said, leaving him at the little front gate as she turned to walk up the short drive.

“Our first lesson is tomorrow,” Gilbert said, startling Anne. She stopped halfway up the front steps to regard the man in front of her house. He was grinning at her, that same infuriating ( _lovely_ ) cheeky grin that made him seem so boyish. With his hands in his pockets, Gilbert Blythe looked very much the impish lad come to call on the girl he had a crush on, and the thought made Anne blush. “Three o’clock; as soon as I dismiss my students. I won’t accept tardiness, Miss Shirley.”

His exaggerated teacher’s voice ruined the illusion of young love, and Anne shook her head at him in bewildered consternation

“Goodnight,” she called.

“See you tomorrow, Carrots!”

And with a quick wave, Gilbert turned on his heel and started back down the road.

Not prepared to let him get the last word, Anne rushed back to the gate and called after him.

“See you tomorrow, Turnip-Head!”

She was sure she heard him laugh all the way back to Green Gables.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you one and all for continuing to love and comment and kudos and bookmark this story. We are now entering the latter half, and much like most Shirbert romances, the course will not run perfectly smooth, but it will have a happy ending.
> 
> Next Chapter: let the 30 days of Shirbert begin!


	7. The Caller, The Teacher, The Neighbour, The Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t think this is proper maths,” Anne argued, holding up her borrowed slate.
> 
> “It’s geometry, Anne,” Gilbert answered from his place at the blackboard.

** Day 01 **

“This is not an appropriate hour to be calling,” Anne scolded as she opened the door to Gilbert.

She wasn’t even properly dressed, having taken advantage of the Barrys being gone to sleep in an hour past her usual rising, but Gilbert’s knocking had been so insistent that it was all she could do to throw a shawl over her petticoat-clad person, tie her damp hair in a knot at the base of her neck and throw open the door.

“I, uh…um, yes, sorry, I was just returning this,” Gilbert stammered, finally holding out the dish that had once housed Anne’s shepherd’s pie. It didn’t escape Anne’s notice that his eyes roved over her body, and it made her feel decidedly wicked when her first impulse wasn’t to slap him, but to let him look.

She wondered desperately if he liked what he saw.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the bowl from him. Gilbert smiled crookedly, placing his hands in his pockets as he continued to stare at her. It made Anne’s arms breakout in goosebumps and she pulled the shawl more firmly over her shoulders. “Is there anything else?”

“No. We’re still on for three?”

“I don’t know, Gilbert. It seems like such a fruitless endeavour. I have years to catch up on,” Anne replied, putting a voice to the doubts that had plagued her mind over the course of the night. It was a gallant offer on his part to teach her, but truly, what would ever become of it?

Anne was the Barrys’ maid. That was her lot in life and she needed to finally accept it.

“Did I ever tell you I want to be a doctor?” Gilbert asked after a few seconds of silence.

“I don’t believe so,” Anne responded, confused as to why he would make such a sudden confession.

“I’ll be attending Redmond College first, for my bachelor’s degree, and then it’ll be medical school for a few years before I can set up a practice of my own. That’s at least six more years of school ahead of me, and it won’t be inexpensive. That’s the reason I went to Queen’s first, so that I could save my teacher’s salary to help fulfill my true passion.”

“My goodness,” Anne sighed. She thought it an admirable dream, and having seen him with the Avonlea schoolchildren, knew he had the patience and kindness to become a remarkable doctor.

“I had to catch up, too. I was away from school for a year when my dad got sick, then two more when I was sailing on the Primrose. But I took correspondence courses, and I was lucky when I made acquaintances with a passenger who is a professor at Redmond and agreed to tutor me for the Queen’s entrance exams. I worked and studied hard for a year, and I was accepted to Queen’s. Then I worked and studied hard for another year and now I’m here in Avonlea. And I’ll work and study hard again for as long as it takes me until I’m Doctor Blythe.”

“But that’s you, Gil,” Anne uttered softly, her voice going so small she could be mistaken for a mouse. Gilbert didn’t like that. Anne Shirley was no mouse. She was a phoenix, and he intended to help her see that fire in herself so she could rise from the ashes.

“It can be you, too,” he exclaimed, those marvelous fireflies flitting around his eyes again as he smiled at her. “I know better than anyone what it’s like think your wishes don’t matter; to feel alone and despondent. But I also know what it’s like when you take charge of your life and pursue those wishes with vigor and headstrong determination.”

“And what is it like?” she asked.

“It’s like dancing in the middle of one of Ms. Barry’s parties,” he replied, remembering how Anne had laughed in his arms as they’d twirled across the ballroom, her eyes alight with bliss, her feet so light she could very well be flying, lifted by the happy thoughts that filled her to the brim when they’d stepped together under the flower garlands and candlelight. He could tell that Anne remembered that jubilation as well, her lips lifting in a soft grin (and thank goodness, for it had been a gamble to allude to the Night-That-Never-Happened).

“Do you…do you really think I can get into Queen’s?” she finally asked shyly, hiding her mouth behind a fist curled around her shawl.

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to, Carrots,” Gilbert answered honestly. “But it’s not really about if I believe you can do it. Do you think you can do it?”

Anne didn’t answer.

She stood in the archway of the Barry’s front entrance and looked up at Gilbert, letting the warmth of his regard – of his confidence – in her wash around her like the sweetest of autumn breezes. With him encouraging her, taking a brave step forward seemed easy.

“So, I’ll see you at three?” he wondered.

“I’ll be there,” she promised.

“Alright.”

And with another unsubtle sweep of her body with those large hazel eyes, Gilbert tipped his hat and left Anne on her doorstep, whistling all the way to the schoolhouse. And when his students asked why he was in such a chipper mood, Gilbert didn’t say a word.

* * *

** Day 04 **

“I don’t think this is proper maths,” Anne argued, holding up her borrowed slate.

“It’s geometry, Anne,” Gilbert answered from his place at the blackboard.

“Why are there letters?”

“Because math has letters sometimes.”

“I have never heard of anything so preposterous! Letters are meant to make words, not sums.”

“They’re used as placeholders for numbers,” Gilbert explained, moving to sit beside her on the bench at the desk she occupied. “You’ve started out fine,” he said encouragingly as he reviewed the work on her slate.

“I thought the point of math was the finished product, not the beginning,” she grumbled.

“And how do you expect to get to the end if you don’t have a good grasp of the start?” was Gilbert’s glib reply.

“When will I ever use geometry, anyway!” Anne huffed, slamming her chalk down on the desk.

“For the Queen’s entrance exams. They have a whole section for maths and geometry is part of it.”

“That’s discriminatory against those not numerically inclined!”

“What does that even mean?!”

The repartee went back and forth for a few minutes more, Anne getting increasingly impassioned over the uselessness of geometry and letters in maths while Gilbert tried to sidestep her arguments with rationale without losing his own temper. Anne was proving to be a more trying student than Minnie May, and Gilbert told her so, unable to help the chortle that bubbled forth when Anne gaped at him in insulted shock.

“I am _not_ as strenuous as _that_ ,” she insisted, crossing her arms and giving Gilbert her back. Rolling his eyes, Gilbert had to remind himself that it was his bright idea to tutor Anne in the first place, and fiery temper or no, he was going to keep his word.

“Anne, come on,” he complained, tapping her on the shoulder. When she didn’t even flinch in his direction, Gilbert felt his good sense finally snap.

On an immature impulse, he curled his fingers around the tail of Anne’s long red braid and tugged.

“Hey, Carrots,” he goaded, giving the red strands another yank, just firm enough that she remembered he was there. Swiftly, Anne turned back to him, grey eyes swirling like little storm clouds, and Gilbert was instantly reminded why it was never a good idea to resort to schoolboy antics. As Anne glared at him, Gilbert was sure she was about to pick up the slate and smash it over his head for the loathed nickname and churlish action, and he knew that if she did it was well deserved on his part.

She didn’t, though.

Instead of a blow to the skull, Gilbert found himself locked in a staring contest with Anne as she regarded him like one would an ant. Then, moving slowly, calculatedly, she leaned over to him, the menace in her expression giving Gilbert cause to edge back, but Anne pressed forward and, raising her hand, she flicked her fingers against his brow, the tap sharp and biting.

“Turnip-Head,” she groused.

Then with a mighty pout, she folded her arms on the desk and laid her head on them.

“Hey,” he said calmly, hoping his remorse was reflected in his tone. “It’s fine. Here, we’ll do it together.”

It took almost a quarter of an hour of goading before Anne raised her head from her arms and deemed to give the slate, and the geometry, her attention.

And so, the pair spent the rest of the hour going over equations. Though Gilbert remained patient as he meticulously walked Anne through the problems step by step, the seventeen-year old left the lesson sure that she would never grasp the subject, having been unsuccessful in solving a single sum without the schoolmaster’s guidance.

* * *

** Day 06 **

“We need to talk about your run-on sentences,” Gilbert said, taking the pencil that he’d perched behind his ear and scratching a line through a sentence that ran nearly a paragraph in length on the first page of the essay Anne had written for him on the history of Prince Edward Island. He handed the page back to Anne so she could review his edit and was not surprised when she glowered at him and slapped the sheet against his chest without even glancing at his notes.

“Unless it is to compliment their faultless execution, then there is nothing we need to discuss about my sentences,” she claimed. 

“There is if you intend to squeeze every word in the dictionary into each one,” he replied sarcastically.

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing, but I think there are too many superlative words in the whole of the English language for me to summarize the breadth of the island’s fascinating biography,” Anne rhapsodized with her chin held high.

“Well, I think two or three words are sufficient,” Gilbert retorted, handing Anne’s paper back.

“You have the imagination of a dust mote,” she grumbled, snatching the sheet away and fanning her fingers over the wrinkles. “I’m sure you’re completely wrong about my loquacious instinct for the written word. After all, why have so many big wonderful words if we’re not meant to use them to express big wonderful ideas? Don’t you agree, Mathew?”

“Well –”

“Don’t be dragging us into your debates, Anne Shirley,” Marilla scolded, turning to pin Anne with a no-nonsense stare from her perch at the front of the buggy.

The Cuthberts and Gilbert had called on Anne to escort her to church, with an extended invitation to join them for Sunday dinner after the service. Since she and Gilbert were still dedicated to her further education, Anne had accepted the invitation, if only to get more tutoring from Gilbert and not because she was fond of his company.

“I was only seeking a second opinion on the subject, Marilla,” Anne assured.

“It’s hardly fair to ask Mathew, then,” Gilbert protested.

“And why would you say that?”

“Because it’s biased,” Gilbert argued. “You could tell Mathew that the sky was purple and he’d be inclined to agree because you’re his favourite.”

“That’s not true,” Anne protested halfheartedly, though she smiled all the same and practically beamed when she caught Mathew’s shoulders shaking in a little chuckle. The older man chanced a brief glance at her over his shoulder and winked, as if it remained their own little secret that they each held the other in a high and favourable regard.

The late September sun shone down on the merry group as they ambled along towards the little stone church and Anne lifted her head to absorb the cheerful rays, for once not minding that it would make her freckles stand out as ruthlessly as her red hair. In her present company, the young woman couldn’t make herself undergo a single sensation other than true contentment.

Being rocked back and forth on the road, Mathew carefully driving them along, Marilla remarking on the scenery they passed, and Gilbert sitting across from her on the flatbed continuing to butcher her essay with more edits, Anne had the impression of carrying the universe inside her chest, for her heart felt bright and full and vast with a joy she had never truly known but had always yearned for. 

The four of them together, making their way to church, enjoying one another’s company, having inside jokes, bantering with no trace of malice, and able to simply relax in the presence of one another under the autumn sun.

It was exactly how Anne imagined having a family of her own would feel like.

* * *

** Day 07 **

“It’s still a little light out. Would you like to go for a walk, Gilbert?”

“I’m sorry, Ruby, but I’m staying behind to help clean up,” Gilbert replied, stacking the chairs used by the A.V.I.S. members at their just concluded meeting.

“Oh! But that’s what Anne does,” Ruby implored, staring after the redhead who was occupied stuffing pages into her club dossier. “She’s used to it, you know, tidying up. She doesn’t need help.”

“Maybe not,” Gilbert answered, put out that Ruby seemed to believe that because Anne was a maid she was predisposed to cleaning the messes of others. “But I’m helping because I want to, not because Anne needs me to.”

Looking properly ashen as she recognized the reprimand for what it was, Ruby seemed on the edge of tears until, suddenly, she was smiling up at Gilbert like he was a knight on horseback.

“Of course! You’re so kind, Gilbert,” she exclaimed, her voice going high and strident. “I’ll help, too!” And with a flourish of bouncy blond curls, Ruby rushed towards the long table they had maneuvered to the centre of the room and struggled to drag it back to its place against the wall.

“Here, Ruby, we’ll help,” Charlie said, pulling Moody by the arm. The two young men made quick work of shuffling the heavy table away, all the while remarking that the tedious job was not suitable for a lady. And yet, both had had their hats and coats on, ready to leave until they’d spotted Ruby trying her best to be helpful. When it had been just Anne who would be left alone to do the job, there’d been no talk of ‘suitable jobs’ or ‘ladies’ then.

It made Gilbert angry as he came to understand a little more of Anne’s world, and he was rough with the chairs as he continued to stack them meticulously, biding his time until Charlie finally offered to take Ruby on her desired walk. Though the young woman did look forlornly over at Gilbert, she took Charlie’s arm and let herself be led out of the room. When it was only he and Anne left in the hall, Gilbert waited for her, watching as she continued to file pages away in her dossier.

“You know, I’ve been running A.V.I.S. for two years, and not once have any of the boys offered to help me tidy up after a meeting; or any of the girls, for that matter,” she said abruptly, startling Gilbert so much he fumbled in the middle of knotting his scarf around his neck. “But then again, no one’s offered to help me before you.”

She never looked up from her busy task, letting the truth of her reality settle in the air between them. Even in A.V.I.S., where she was a co-founder and president, the people who should have been Anne’s peers saw her as something beneath them, and all because she was a servant.

“It’s not right,” he said, voice deep with meaning and tinted bitter with the awful veracity of the society they lived in.

“It’s the way it is,” Anne huffed, resigned.

She’d been a cog in the horrible machine of class division all her life, used as nothing more than a servant and so viewed as incapable of being anything else by those she served. That had been why she was so suspicious of Gilbert at first. With his kind words and gentle intentions, it was no wonder Anne had assumed he’d wanted something from her, for none of the other men outside of her caste had ever looked her way without expecting something. Recalling some of the offers made to her in the past was enough to make Anne want to retch, or scream, or cry, or all three.

But she wouldn’t, not in front of Gilbert.

She didn’t want him to know, didn’t want him to think less of her when the very world they lived in told him that he should. Anne was certain it would break her heart into a million shards if Gilbert ever looked at her as if she was something lacking…something unworthy.

“Thank you for helping,” she stated briskly, wanting to keep her composure and the best way to do that was to feign indifference. She spoke to him as if concluding a tired business transaction, clutching her dossier to her chest and nodding at him curtly before moving to get her hat and coat.

“May I walk you home?” Gilbert asked, reaching her coat before she could and helping her slip it on.

“You seemed pretty eager to avoid walking Miss Gillis a few moments ago,” Anne sniffed, hoping she didn’t sound jealous because she truly didn’t mean to be.

“I didn’t want to walk with Miss Gillis,” Gilbert answered, hands in his pockets and eyes downcast, admiring the stains on his boots.

“But you want to walk with me?” Anne checked, wishing she didn’t sound too incredulous or hopeful.

“Yes,” Gilbert answered. It was a swift and honest response breathed easily into the air between them, and yet it felt as if it carried the weight of an anchor. 

Anne thought of Ruby Gillis, the pretty, peppy blond with blue eyes, and cherub face, and lilting laugh, and innocent charm. She was the sort of girl ( _lady_ ) that Gilbert Blythe should be seen walking with. She was the eldest daughter of a very respected family, her father being the Avonlea train station’s superintendent, and to be courted by the handsome schoolmaster with aspirations of becoming a doctor was well within the proper status quo. The gossip such a match would cause wouldn’t even be enough to make Rachel Lynde bat an eye.

But Gilbert didn’t want to walk with Ruby Gillis.

He wanted to escort Anne; lady’s maid, redheaded, plain, skinny, servant girl Anne Shirley.

“So, Anne? What do you say?”

She stared as the fireflies twinkled in the depths of his hazel eyes, their merry golden light beckoning her like a moth to a flame. She knew she would be burned, knew that going forward meant causing all sorts of trouble, and yet Anne couldn’t make herself care for any of the excuses as to why she should refuse him.

“Yes.”

Anne and Gilbert left the meeting room arm-in-arm, and if anyone happened to see them as they strolled back to the Barry household, Anne felt she was at least doing the old biddies of Avonlea a noble service by providing them with a juicy story to speculate upon over afternoon tea.

* * *

** Day 10 **

“You did not!”

“I did.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“My dear Turnip-Head, are you calling me a liar?!”

“Never,” Gilbert laughed. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. Of course _you_ ran away to join the circus.”

They were idling at the fence of Green Gables, Anne on one side and Gilbert on the other. He’d been tending the fields when he’d spotting her passing by, a basket of food and some cleaning product in her arms. Though he’d offered to help her get the parcels home, Anne had refused and instead opted to rest a moment, so Gilbert naturally offered to keep her company.

How the subject of runaways and circuses cropped up, neither was sure.

“It was only for a week,” Anne continued, “and Mr. Hammond beat me black and blue when he caught me and dragged me back to the house, but my adventures for those magical days were worth every lashing.”

“I bet,” Gilbert sighed, hating that Anne had once been so abused. “Did Mr. Hammond hurt you often?”

“I suppose it depends on if you think a child deserves to be beaten for misbehaving,” Anne replied edgily.

“What a horrible way of thinking,” Gilbert exclaimed.

“Why? It’s not so archaic. Lots of people believe that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. It even says so in the bible.”

Anne had occupied her attention with a loose button on her coat as she spoke, not daring to look at Gilbert as her words sunk in, afraid that what she might see cross his features was resigned agreement for the verse that had made her childhood so hateful.

“No one deserves to be struck,” he stated with firm conviction. “Especially children.”

She looked up at him. His jaw was clenched, lips set in that no-nonsense line he got so often when he was fed up with her whinging over lessons. He seemed resolved in his statement, and Anne swore her heart skipped a beat when she realized that Gilbert Blythe would be a champion for abused children across Canada.

“Do you want to know about tightrope walking?” she asked, filled with a hyper urge to remain in his company a little longer.

Gilbert quirked a dark brow at Anne, almost dizzy at her rapid-fire change of subject, but he didn’t question her. Instead, he rested his chin in his hand and remained Anne’s rapt audience as she spun her tale of seven days living amongst the trapeze artists and elephants.

* * *

** Day 12 **

Gilbert was at a loss.

Anne wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t answer him, wouldn’t move from her spot on the back step of the Barry homestead. He’d found her curled around herself when he’d come calling with a few jars of Marilla’s pickles, her legs pulled up tight against her body, arms wrapped like vices over her calves and her face pressed to her knees. Her red hair was loose around her shoulders, creating a curtain that shielding her from the world…from him.

He’d tried talking to her, of course, and at first when he’d spotted her, so small and prone, he’d been in a panic, asking her question after question, his anxiety cresting when Anne would not ( _could not_ ) answer him. He thought better about touching her, even though all he wanted to do was pull her to him in a comforting embrace and assure her that whatever troubled her, she could share that burden with him. But then he remembered her stories of her childhood beatings, and considering her obvious delicate state, feared he might push Anne over the edge if he tried to touch her, regardless if his contact was intended to be soothing.

“I don’t want to leave you like this, Anne,” he whispered, wishing he knew how to help.

His plea seemed to reach her, for Anne finally lifted her head the barest inch, her grey eyes – rimmed red with the tears she’d cried – skirted away from his imploring gaze, flicking towards the door that remained ajar behind her. Understanding the message, and glad to finally have something to do that might prove helpful, Gilbert moved to enter the Barry home.

Though he felt somewhat insolent to be roaming around a person’s house without their consent, Gilbert’s drive to protect Anne far outpowered his social graces. He did not linger long in rooms as he searched them efficiently for whatever it was that had caused Anne such distress.

He found it in the kitchen.

The room was a mess.

There were shards of broken pottery strewn across the floor, and on every surface globs of sauce had curdled throughout the morning, making it seem as if a bomb of dark pulp and paste had exploded in the centre of the chamber. The sweet smell that permeated the kitchen suggested that the sauce had once been the beginnings of plum pudding, and as Gilbert scanned the area he spotted a strange lump under the butcher’s block.

Carefully, Gilbert leaned down to inspect the lump. It was dark and looked matted, but it was also coated in the sauce and it lay unmoving as Gilbert edged closer. When he noticed the thin tail, Gilbert realized he was looking at the corpse of a little wood mouse.

He quickly put all the pieces of the puzzle together and managed to solve some of the mystery.

Clearly, the mouse had drowned in the sauce set aside for plum pudding. Based on the mess in the kitchen, when Anne had discovered the wretched thing she’d thrown the pot and all of its contents to the floor and fled the scene. Why finding a mouse drowned in dessert should affect her so he had no idea, but if that was truly what had sent her into such a condition, then Gilbert was going to do his best to right the situation.

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he got to work.

An hour later, the Barrys’ kitchen was pristine, shining from floor to ceiling. The broken crockery was swept away, the ruined pudding had been scrubbed off counters and walls, and the sad little wood mouse was disposed of in the brush across the lane. When Gilbert rejoined Anne on the back step, she was no longer so tightly coiled around herself, having finally lifted her head, though she still did not say a word or look over at him when he sat beside her.

He didn’t have to tell her what he had done. Gilbert knew that Anne would just know without his having to say a single word on the subject. It was remarkable to be so in tune with another’s thoughts that you could understand each other without having to utter a single syllable. And even though Gilbert wished Anne would speak, he recognized that, right now, she couldn’t.

So he wouldn’t speak either.

Instead, Gilbert sat with Anne as the sun continued to climb high in the sky, a sentry beside the wounded lady, ready to slay her dragons on command. Eventually, Anne let herself lean against him, her precious red head pressing lightly against his shoulder. She still didn’t talk, and Gilbert didn’t oblige her to explain, but when she shifted so that he might put his arm around her and at last let him comfort her with his gentle touch, Gilbert knew that Anne would be alright.

* * *

** Day 15 **

“—deceitful rogue!” Anne chided unconvincingly as she accepted the cup of cider.

“Well that’s just grand. I go through the trouble of kidnapping you and you call me names.”

“I hardly call this a kidnapping,” Anne said, gesturing to the blanket laid out under them. “It was more of a dirty trick.”

“I, trick the great Anne Shirley? You give me too much credit,” Gilbert scoffed, pouring his own cup of cider and holding it out to her as if to make a toast. Rolling her eyes, Anne clinked her tin cup to his and took a delicate sip of the tart drink. “Besides,” he continued, “you did say you would like to see how things are coming along on my land.”

“I thought we’d be inspecting the work, not taking a picnic in the middle of it.”

For indeed, when Gilbert had brought Anne to his orchard he had diverted her away from the freshly cut fields and repaired fenceposts and had brought her to a shaded glade in the middle of the apple trees where he had laid out a quilt dotted with asters and a jug of spiced apple cider.

Anne had put on a good front pretending to be upset over the ruse, but as she swirled a cinnamon stick in her cider and inhaled the piquant aroma of autumn, her true joy expressed itself. Her shoulders relaxed, she started clicking the toes of her boots together, and when a crisp breeze disturbed the loose tendrils of red around her temple she signed contently.

“The Barrys would not be too impressed with me right now. Playing hooky instead of doing chores,” Anne confessed, not sounding the least bothered by the thought.

“Tell me about them,” Gilbert requested, reclined on the blanket beside her, his long lean body stretched out, legs crossed at the ankles and his upper weight supported on one elbow. He looked a regular rapscallion staring up at her so, and Anne was so thrilled to be the centre of his attention that she launched into her epic tale of life with Barry family.

She told him how Mrs. Barry held the most sensational parties requiring Anne to polish silver for days and wash all of the best linens. She explained her fondness for Mr. Barry’s library and how he allowed Anne to borrow a book a week so long as she did not crease the spines or turndown the page corners. She knew he would laugh at the trials and tribulations of Josephine Barry’s attempts to teach Anne chess, a game the redhead confessed she found more tedious than geometry. She impressed him when she recalled the night of Minnie May’s croup and her valiant efforts to save the little girl who, until then, had been the very bane of her existence in the Barry homestead.

Mostly, though, Anne spoke of her bosom friend, Diana. Launching into their first meeting, which had ended with the girls making a pledge to be best friends until the end of time, Anne took Gilbert through the last four years of the most celebrated relationship she had, taking him along through their many adventures right up until Diana’s departure for finishing school.

“The party was all Aunt Josephine’s idea, of course, and though Diana is gracefully humble I think she was pleased to have a soiree in her honour. But oh! Then the poor dear, she was caught in that horrible downpour. I suppose I must take part of the blame, since I’d turned a blind-eye when I saw her slip away, but how was I to know that a cloudburst was upon us? She’d come rushing in from the garden just drenched head to toe and looking like a black cat half drowned!” Anne started laughing so hard she had to stop her tale for a moment, clutching her belly and wiping tears from her eyes. “It feels so mean to laugh about it now, for she got so sick afterwards. I tried to avoid it, practically undressing her in the back parlour before hastening her into a hot bath, but I think the fever had already taken root long before I ever got her wet clothes off, so we had to leave the party early and get her straight to bed.”

“So that’s why you never came back –” Gilbert cut himself off, realizing his mistake of mentioning his own knowledge of that night, but he’d been unable to help himself, still hurt that she had abandoned him and wanting to know why. Anne caught the gaffe, too, the laughter leaving her grey eyes. She turned away from Gilbert, hoping that if she didn’t look at him she could stop the memories of their kiss from bombarding her with sensation.

She’d been doing so well in forgetting how they met, choosing to believe that the afternoon they’d made peace in the Blythe house was their true first introduction. Still, that hadn’t stopped the dreams or the remembrances of Gilbert’s kiss and his hands and his taste. Sometimes, just a flash of the memories would leave Anne feeling hot under the collar, much like she was now, sitting with the object of her yearning under the friendly shade of the apple trees.

But even as she sat in the middle of Gilbert’s orchard, embarrassed and fidgety, she couldn’t seem to help herself from asking the single question that had been on her mind since the first day they’d seen one another at the schoolhouse.

“Gilbert?” she asked so quietly. “Why were you there?”

She daren’t look at him for fear that she might presume his answer before he spoke, worried that he would tell her he had attended the soiree with the intention of courting Diana, or that he was seeking patronage from Aunt Josephine, or a thousand other reasons that would leave her feeling hurt and broken. The very worst thing he might say was that he’d gone to the party to pursue pretty company with no preference for which woman might fill that role, and just the thought of _that_ response had Anne’s heart cracking.

“I went because Fred asked me to.”

Anne started, looking at Gilbert.

“Fred Wright?”

“Yes. He’s a friend from Queen’s and we lived in the same boarding house. He was absolutely determined to go - think he’s sweet on your Diana. He didn’t want to attend alone, though, so he begged me to go, too. Do you know Fred?”

Of all the possible things Gilbert might have said, attending Diana’s farewell soiree as a support for his besotted friend was not at all a scenario Anne could have predicted. And suddenly, there were no cracks in her heart, though the organ did feel like it was swelling to ten times its size for how full she felt. Tucking her chin against her chest, Anne began to laugh silently, her shoulders rolling as the jollity took her.

“What? What’s so funny, Anne?” Gilbert asked, sitting up and brushing his arm against hers.

“Did you find Fred…after?” she wondered delicately, still smiling.

“Yes,” Gilbert answered, remembering that he’d waited almost half-an-hour for Anne to return to the conservatory before giving up and going back to the ballroom. He had hoped he would find her, but instead he’d found his chum, the ruddy faced Fred wringing water from his tie into a potted plant and refusing to explain how he’d gotten soaked.

“I don’t suppose Fred mentioned why he was drenched when you rejoined him?” Anne managed to ask through her dying chortles.

“How did you know…”

It took Gilbert a few seconds to catch up to Anne’s conclusion.

Both Diana and Fred had been caught in the storm, the only two partygoers to have managed to do so. It wasn’t so hard to believe that they may have been seized in the downpour together, and now that he was recalling that part of the night, Gilbert remembered that Fred had been tight-lipped about the whole evening, though his gaze had darted up to the stairs of Ms. Barry’s mansion several times before they’d finally left the party. It had seemed that Fred was waiting for something, but now Gilbert understood that his friend had been waiting for someone to make a reappearance.

“I thought there was no one sorrier than me that Diana got sick that night,” Anne confessed, staring into her cup of cider. “But I suspect that Fred Wright may have indeed been much more miserable.”

Sympathetic to his friend’s unfortunate timing, Gilbert clinked his tin cup to Anne’s.

“Maybe they’ll have better luck when your Diana is back from France,” he suggested. “I could write Fred to come and visit me and we could organize a meeting – preferably on a sunny day – but perhaps we’d best not take chances and just arrange for the reunion to be indoors.”

“Yes,” Anne agreed cheerily, thinking it would be perfectly marvelous to orchestrate a date between the two drenched sweethearts in the near future, and the idea was all the better if she and Gilbert worked together to make that happy day happen.

* * *

** Day 18 **

“And this is Bash’s island.”

Anne leaned so close to the globe that her nose nearly touched the shiny surface.

“Trinidad,” she sounded out carefully, resting her chin over her folded arms. “My goodness, that’s nearly touching South America! Did you really sail so far?” she gasped, thrilled with her geography lesson.

Gilbert had invited Anne to join him at his desk that afternoon, placing the globe between them. For the better part of two hours he’d used his sea stories to take her around the world, sharing his experiences from the misty moors of Ireland, to the crowded harbours of Shanghai, to the beautiful gem of Trinidad.

“Which place was your favourite?” she asked, eyes alight with intrigue.

“New York City was amazing,” Gilbert recalled. “The buildings there are so tall they call them skyscrapers. I loved Jamaica, too, with the sugarcane fields for miles, and the music! But I think Bash said it best every time we berthed in Trinidad: there’s no better port than your own.”

“And is that what Prince Edward Island is, now? Your port?” Anne wondered, knowing Gilbert was an island-born boy, but he had grown up out west.

“You could say it has grown on me,” he confided, pinning Anne with a meaningful stare that made her blush and keep her attention on the globe.

“Where’s Bash now?” she asked, tracing the coast of Chile.

“Now he is working in Charlottetown like the dutiful newlywed he is,” Gilbert answered, smiling fondly as he recalled his friend’s wedding. “He met Mary when he had some shore leave and decided to visit me at school at the start of spring. I think by the end of April they were engaged and before the season was over, they were married.”

“How romantic! True love at first sight!” Anne exclaimed, beaming.

“Yes,” Gilbert agreed looking into Anne’s eyes, wondering if she remembered the night they’d met, remembered the magnetic pull that had brought them closer and closer, like destiny was pushing them together for some sacred purpose. When Bash had rhapsodized about his wife after their first meeting, Gilbert had thought the man a heart-eyed fool, teasing him for days about ‘my angel, Mary’ and the slack-jawed expression he would get whenever in her company. He hadn’t understood what falling in love meant then. But then Ms. Barry’s party had happened…

Anne had happened.

Now, Gilbert understood completely the way a man’s composure deserted him utterly when his heart was stolen by the most amazing woman in the world.

“Do you miss him?” Anne asked, drawing Gilbert from his musings.

“I do,” he admitted, his mind reviewing dozens of memories of Bash, highlighting the man’s easy smile and teasing nature. “I’m hoping that he’ll agree to move to Avonlea soon.”

“Really?” Anne cried, clapping her hands together. “I should be glad to meet him if he ever did.”

Gilbert could already envision the meeting.

He knew Bash would be polite, but the man would throw Gilbert sly looks throughout the introduction, having already deduced the nineteen-year old’s feelings from the letters Gilbert had written him which were more often about Anne than not (in his last letter, Bash had accused Gilbert of being a mook for not simply telling Anne outright how he felt). Anne, of course, would be naïve to the friends’ silent banter, surely too absorbed in meeting someone so exotic. There would be jokes and laughter and good feelings all around and in his heart, Gilbert knew it would be exactly the picture of the family he so badly wanted.

“I think he’d like that,” he replied, and Anne smiled at him, the tip of her finger now charting an unknown passage across the globe as their geography lesson continued.

* * *

** Day 20 **

“So, I’m heading for the coop for the morning eggs and all of a sudden, this boy jumps out at me from inside the hutch, screaming like a temperamental goat. He’s covered in straw and mud and…well, he’s…” Mathew peered back to see if Marilla was paying them any mind, but she seemed to still be occupied with plating the pie in the kitchen. Beckoning Anne closer, he leaned over the table and whispered the end of his tale. “He’s as naked as the day he was born!”

Anne had to cover her mouth with both hands to stop the deafening guffaw from alerting Marilla to the cheeky yarn. It was a struggle to regain her composure, and Mathew’s eyes sparkled like stars to see Anne so pleased, at last able to tell her a story in return for the many she’d gifted him.

“Oh, Gilbert, you were such a brat!” she reprimanded between her fingers.

“I was three,” Gilbert groused, sniffing away an itch in his nose.

“And an exhibitionist,” Anne teased.

Gilbert wanted to retort, but a ferocious sneeze caught him and he had to occupy himself with digging out his handkerchief from his trouser pocket rather than return a clever witticism.

“You were always looking for an excuse to get out of your trousers, then, running ‘round every farm in Avonlea with a trail of clothes behind you,” Mathew went on.

Were it not for the joyous animation that had taken over the man upon Anne’s arrival for dinner, Gilbert might have let himself feel a bit wounded for the embarrassing stories of his care-free childhood. However, Mathew Cuthbert radiated under Anne’s attention and Gilbert didn’t have the will to put an end to their fun in teasing him for his days as the Avonlea bare-bottomed bandit.

“So, what did you do after you intruder – ahem – _exposed_ himself?” Anne wondered.

“I told him to get home,” Mathew finished. “After I gave him the egg basket for some cover.”

“And did I refuse your gift?” Gilbert guessed.

“You put it on your head and skipped all the way back to your orchard.”

All three erupted into giggles then and did not quiet until Marilla returned with a tray laden with fresh apple pie. She looked upon the trio queerly, her sharp blue eyes seeking the reason for their mirth but unable to locate the source. Returning to her task as hostess, Marilla handed out the plates of pie (her brow pinched with concern when Gilbert refused the dessert, having never turned away one of her sweets before) and took her seat at the table.

“And what is all the merriment about?” she asked, placing a generous tablespoon of cream on her pie and pretending like she did not want to be let in on the fun.

“Just telling the young ones about Gilbert’s days in Avonlea,” Mathew replied, flashing the nineteen-year old a wink before digging into his dessert.

“You shouldn’t tease the boy, Mathew,” Marilla chided, and she seemed almost serious if it weren’t for the slight twitch of a smile that lifted the corner of her mouth. “Were you reminding him of the time he played pirates with the rooster and lost?”

The laughter erupted around the table again, ending with Anne insisting that Marilla recount the story, leaving no detail behind.

Gilbert basked in the tableau before him, admiring how Anne and Marilla talked while Mathew added a few details here and there but otherwise was content to eat his pie and listen to the women. And no matter how much his stomach seemed to churn, or his head felt full, or his nose itched, Gilbert believed the night to be one of the very best he’d spent in Green Gables.

* * *

** Day 21 **

Gilbert’s head was pounding when he woke, the ache not as sharp as it had been earlier, but still stinging enough that opening his eyes felt like a Sisyphean effort. When he did manage to crack one eye open, the vision before him convinced the nineteen-year-old that his fever must be much worse than Marilla had thought.

Surely, he was hallucinating Anne at his bedside, one of his shirts in her hands as she deftly mended the buttons on his cuff. Her hair was down and in orange tangles, as if she had fought the wind to get to his side. The way she sat perched in the rocking chair with a quilt over her lap suggested she’d made herself comfortable in his room and had been there for hours, rocking and humming and watching over him.

“Carrots?”

Anne’s head shot up at his coarse call, the mending and the quilt forgotten as she bounded up from the chair and moved towards him.

“Here,” she whispered, offering him a glass of water. “Please try and drink it all. You haven’t drunk anything since last night.”

Gilbert tried to raise his hand to take the glass, but it fell limply on his chest, the impact making him groan as it felt as if every bone in his body was pulsing with pain. With a tender touch, Anne cupped Gilbert’s head and urged him to raise it slightly before bringing the cup to his lips. The first touch of the water to his tongue brought such a relief that Gilbert finished the liquid in a few greedy gulps before asking for another and downing it with the same quick effort.

“What’s wrong with me?” he wondered, eyes closed, head pounding, and Anne’s cool fingers working magic in his curls.

“For an aspiring doctor, I’m surprised you didn’t catch the signs of your fever before you became so afflicted you had to be bedridden for a day,” she teased, stroking his hair. When she pressed both her palm then the back of her hand to his brow, Gilbert keened like a purring cat, drawn to the comfort of her touch.

“What’s my diagnosis, Nurse Shirley?” he asked, unable to help teasing her even as he felt so horrible.

“I think you’ll live, Turnip-Head,” she groused, unable to keep a bit of amusement out of her tone. “In fact, I’d say you’ve just taken a turn. You’re not nearly as hot as when Mathew came to get me this morning.”

“Mathew told you I’m sick?”

“He actually asked if I wouldn’t mind going to the schoolhouse and letting the children know their lessons were cancelled because their schoolmaster had gotten himself a fever,” Anne corrected, almost as if she were chiding him for being unwell. “After I did that, I rushed here immediately to see you for myself. Oh Gil…” she stopped herself from continuing, but even with his eyes shut, Gilbert imagined the vulnerable expression on Anne’s face, how her pretty eyes might be brimming with tears and how her bottom lip might be quivering as she fought her distress at the thought that he had been so sick.

“Have you been with me all day?” he couldn’t help asking, hopeful.

“You should have heard the row Marilla and I had over my vigil,” she quipped.

Gilbert smiled.

“Tell me.”

Pulling the rocking chair up so close to his bed her knees brushed the mattress, Anne took Gilbert’s hand in hers and regaled him with the story until he fell into an even and restful slumber.

* * *

** Day 24 **

“Run along, boys! Certainly, you’ll be able to wrap your heads around all that mechanical talk better than us. Besides, we girls have better things to discuss than cogs and gears.”

Anne wanted badly to contradict Josie Pye’s insulting dig to her intelligence, but the tall blond had looped her arm through Anne’s with an iron strength that sent a very clear message that to embarrass her by insisting on going with the men to observe the assembly of the Ferris wheel would not be an advisable action.

The midway folk had arrived earlier that afternoon and, after their room and board and had been seen to, they’d started hauling their cartloads of equipment to the Blythe orchard. It would take two weeks to fully construct the Ferris wheel, not to mention arrange the other rides and games they had brought, and the members of A.V.I.S. had been eager to see the beginnings of the Apple Fair ( _Autumn Jubilee!_ ) come together, none more so than Anne.

So, it was with a vast disappointment that she watched as Moody, Charlie and Gilbert walked ahead towards the construction while she was forced to remain behind. Gilbert was the only one to look back, eyes seeking Anne in a silent question. When she shrugged one shoulder, as if to tell him that she was confused but all was well, he nodded and continued on with the lads towards the Ferris wheel platform.

Josie steered Anne away from the excitement of the construction, her posture stiff and steps clipped.

“Anne, we need to talk.”

“Miss Pye –”

“I’m going to be blunt,” Josie continued, as if Anne hadn’t said a word, but then again, Josie had never given any of Anne’s words much attention. “What you are about with Gilbert Blythe is simply not done and I suggest you put a stop to it immediately.”

“I don’t know what –”

“Don’t lie to me!” Josie hissed. “It’s perfectly clear to anyone with a set of eyes that you are besotted with Gilbert and he seems to think himself interested in you as well, but you must know that a…relationship between a maid and a teacher would be Avonlea’s scandal of the year.”

“And I’m sure you’re telling me this to _protect_ my reputation?” Anne snapped back.

“Good grief, of course not,” Josie scoffed, the very notion of her caring a lick about Anne a truly horrid thought. “It’s Gilbert I’m worried about. He’s a respectable man and you…well, Anne, you’re the help. That sort of social circle mixing just isn’t done. Besides, don’t you see how it must look? The homely handmaid and the handsome schoolmaster? It makes one wonder why he would even give you any attention in the first place, unless there’s some sort of… _arrangement_ between you two?”

Anne ripped her arm out of Josie’s grip, flinching back from the woman as if she’d been slapped, for indeed though she had not said the words, the insinuation seemed far worse.

“Don’t make that face,” Josie complained as Anne’s bottom lip started to tremble and the pale skin of her neck blotched pink as her temper flared.

“How dare you, Josie Pye –”

“It’s Miss Pye –”

“Josie Pye!” Anne screeched, not caring if anyone else in the orchard heard her, though her despicable companion seemed to mind, her head going back and forth as she looked to see if anyone was paying them any attention.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Josie griped, hands on her hips and a scowl pinching her face.

“I cannot believe you would suggest such a hateful, insulting, lewd thing to me,” Anne said, her emotions rising to the surface, the dam she’d built and maintained to protect her feelings from others disintegrating to unleash a tidal wave of every passionate rebuttal she had wanted to spew in Josie’s hateful little face since the moment they’d met. “I wish I was a witch so I could curse you eternally, Josie Pye. I would cast a spell so that your lips would be sewn shut forever to save Avonlea from the deceit and aversion you so like to spread. You have torn asunder my character, which I know you have never thought much of in the first place, but to lay such a blight on Gilbert’s honor is unforgivable. He is kind, and honest, and a true gentleman and to suggest otherwise, as you just have, is certainly the vilest action you have ever committed in your short, misery-spreading life.”

When Anne concluded her tirade, a silence as dense as fog settled over the two young women. Anne was breathing heavily, the raw words she’d spoken having the same affect on her as a run from the Barrys’ to Green Gables. She almost couldn’t think straight she was so offended. For years, Josie had always been eager to remind Anne of her place, and being both an orphan and maid, it seemed the blond woman had positioned Anne somewhere under the dirt beneath her boots. Though it hurt to know she was seen so lowly, Anne had managed to tolerate the attitude for years in composed, seething silence.

And yet, the moment Gilbert’s good name was dragged beyond the dirt with her, Anne had erupted, a vicious volcano of sharp words, tormented truths, and steadfast defense. Josie was welcome to think whatever wretched thing she thought of Anne, but never was the stuck-up snob permitted to even consider an ill notion of Gilbert Blythe.

“Oh dear, you are _actually_ in love with him,” Josie finally said, and the pity in her tone was more than Anne could bear. “You must know that whatever he feels for you, it _can’t_ be love, Anne.”

“I think that whatever Gilbert feels for me is between the two of us, thank you very much!”

And with that, Anne turned her back on Josie and stormed out of the orchard, her braids slapping her back the whole long march back to the Barrys’. Slamming doors and stomping up stairs, only when she was ensconced in the safe darkness of her room did Anne let herself cry the fat ugly tears that had been desperate to break free since the second Josie Pye had looped their arms together.

Flinging herself onto her bed, Anne cried because she feared that Josie was right, she was hopelessly, helplessly, _actually_ in love with Gilbert Blythe.

And Anne continued to cry long into the night because she feared that Josie was right, that Gilbert could never love her in return.

* * *

** Day 28 **

“Tedious.”

“Can you use it in a sentence?”

“The hours we have spent beating this rug are most tedious.”

Anne rolled her eyes, knowing Gilbert couldn’t see her from the other side of the heavy tapestried carpet.

“T-E-D-I-O-U-S,” she spelled, each letter punctuated with a firm strike of the switch as she beat the dust from the navy and cream runner from the front foyer.

The Barrys were due to return from Halifax in two days and Anne had to dedicate her time to getting the house in order. She’d been sorry to tell Gilbert the day before that their lessons would have to be postponed until after she’d had a chance to talk to the Barrys about them, and with the Autumn Jubilee also quickly approaching (a mere eight days away!) she truly did have to put her attention to other things.

That hadn’t stopped Gilbert from visiting her after school, ready to help her beat the carpets clean and start an impromptu spelling lesson.

“Malarkey.”

“As in, your insistence on this one-sided spelling bee is pure malarkey?” Anne jested.

“Just so,” Gilbert answered.

“M-A-L-A-R-K-E-Y.”

“Excellent.”

“I should get to ask you to spell a word!”

“Go on.”

“Well, in the spirit of my feelings over this lesson, spell wearisome, Master Blythe.”

“W-E-A-R-I-S-O-M-E. Now for me, I’d like you to spell—”

“I’ve spelled half the dictionary for you this afternoon. You owe me more words,” Anne insisted, thwacking the carpet with all of the force she could muster. “Chrysanthemum.”

“C-H-R-Y-S-A-N-T-H-E-M-U-M.”

“Mnemonic.”

“M-N-E-M-O-N-I-C.”

“Drat! Thought I’d catch you with the silent ‘m’,” Anne complained, wiping sweat from her brow, plucking at the damp red strands that were sticking to her face and neck. “Turnip-Head.”

“Can you use it in a sentence?”

“My instructor is a most odious Turnip-Head.”

“Can’t I spell ‘odious’ instead?”

“No.”

“T-U-R-N-I-P-H-E-A-D,” Gilbert spelled, sounding slightly vexed. Imagining his frown made Anne smile, just a bit, for it was great fun to agitate Gilbert on occasion, making up for the many times he had irritated her.

“Exquisite,” she said, continuing the spelling bee.

“That’s an easy one. A-N-N-E.”

Anne’s breath caught in her throat and for a moment it was all she could do to remind herself to breathe.

“I’m afraid that’s incorrect,” she said softly.

“But why?” Gilbert wondered, all innocence and cheek. “I didn’t forget the ‘e’.” He peered around from his side of the carpet, hazel eyes spinning with those golden fireflies. They made her stomach coil with warmth that was both exciting and frightening to the young woman, all the more so since she’d come to realize her true feelings for the handsome man. When he looked at her like that, Anne felt like she could do anything, like sing an opera, or dance a ballet, or climb the roof of the schoolhouse and declare her love for all of Avonlea to hear, or kiss him –

“That’s all for today’s lesson,” she decided, turning away from Gilbert and all of the quixotic imaginings that had flashed through her mind. “I really do have to get back to work.”

“Of course,” Gilbert said, taking the carpet down from the drying line and following Anne to the foyer so he could help her lay it down. They worked in efficient silence, smoothing the heavy material and pressing the corners flat to the baseboards. Rising from his crouch, Gilbert offered a hand to Anne as she, too, stood from the floor. When he didn’t release her once she was upright, Anne dared to look at him, his face a smooth expression of serious concern.

“The lessons don’t really have to stop, do they?” Gilbert asked, thumb running along her knuckles.

“I just don’t know how we can find time for them,” Anne confessed, sad to lose not just her regular lessons, but also her time with Gilbert. She hadn’t realized until that morning how much she’d grown to rely on his company as a teacher, a neighbour, and a friend, and her heart truly did mourn the loss of him that the Barrys’ return heralded.

But she was still a maid to the kind family and her first priority and obligation was to their tending. Though Gilbert had made Anne confront and cultivate her aspirations for control over her life, she was still unsure that she had the strength to break her own chains.

Perhaps Anne Shirley truly was destined to be a lady’s maid and nothing else.

“We’ll find time,” Gilbert assured, squeezing her hand. “Even if we have to resort to correspondence lessons, or whole Sundays after church at Green Gables pouring over geometry, or even if I must sit outside your window and review scientific formulas all night, we’ll make it work, Anne. This is important.”

The sincere conviction in Gilbert’s words were almost enough to have Anne weeping. Even when she doubted herself, he still believed in her and it made her feel strong enough to do anything, including chase her dreams.

Impulsively, Anne raised Gilbert’s hand to her lips and pressed the softest kiss to his knuckles before resting her chin on their interlocked fingers as if to stamp the imprint of her peck on his skin like a tattoo.

“Thank you.”

* * *

** Day 30 **

“What’s wrong?” Anne asked when Gilbert invited her into Green Gables. He wasn’t dressed any differently than usual save for the apron he wore covered in sauce and flour, which meant Gilbert had been cooking and that had always very clearly been Marilla’s duty.

“Marilla’s under the weather, I’m afraid,” Gilbert said, taking the casserole dish from Anne and placing it in the centre of the table set only for two.

“Oh dear, is it the headaches again?” Anne wondered, taking off her hat and coat before joining Gilbert in the dining room.

“You know?”

“I accompanied her to the oculist in Charlottetown a few years ago when she had a particularly vicious attack of painful headaches. Since she’s gotten spectacles the spells have been much less, but they haven’t stopped completely. Oh, the poor dear. We could have just cancelled dinner.”

“Marilla wouldn’t hear of it,” Gilbert said. “Besides, I’m not an incapable cook, and it was nice to be able to make something for the Cuthberts for once…and you, too.”

“Well, I should go and say my thanks first, at least, if Marilla is up for it,” Anne insisted. Gilbert nodded and led Anne up the stairs and down the hall to Marilla’s room. The older woman was sat up in bed, eyes closed though they cracked open a little when she caught the sound of footsteps at her threshold. Seeing Anne, Marilla smiled and accepted the company.

“How are you, Marilla?” Anne whispered, remembering that vociferous noise often agitated the woman’s condition.

“Not as well as I would like, but better for Gilbert and Mathew’s care,” she answered lowly, tilting her head towards the corner of her room where Mathew was curled in on himself, asleep in a chair with a book at his feet.

“I’ve got him,” Gilbert said, “you two have a short visit.”

Rousing Mathew, Gilbert helped the groggy man down the hall to his room, getting fresh water for him so that he might wash his face and hands before changing for bed. He also brought him a bowl of the chowder he’d made and promised to check in on Marilla later that night, putting Mathew at ease enough to truly rest.

Heading back for Marilla’s room, Gilbert paused when he heard the two women inside speaking softly.

“…it’s water under the bridge, Marilla.”

“I wish I could make it right.”

“But you have. This past month has fulfilled so many dreams I feared would never be. You’ve treated me as a daughter, just as I’ve always wished to be to you.”

A sigh and something that sounded like a choked back sob echoed in Gilbert’s ears.

“If I could turn back the clock –”

“Why Marilla Cuthbert, listen to you speaking of time travel! And I thought you hadn’t even a drop of imagination in your pinky finger.”

“Silly girl…”

It got quiet for a moment, and Gilbert imagined Anne tucking Marilla in bed, perhaps even kissing her brow.

“Rest now. I’ll see you on Sunday at church and…that is…if I’m still invited for Sunday dinner, I could see you here –”

“The doors of Green Gables are always open to you, Anne Shirley.”

There were no more words after that. When Anne did leave Marilla’s room she was startled to find Gilbert in the hall and hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks. They did not speak as they looked upon one another, Anne awaiting judgement but only finding acceptance, comfort, and gladness in Gilbert’s stalwart hazel eyes. Gilbert knew how important it was to Anne that Marilla had accepted her, and he hoped his gaze conveyed the heartening message ‘ _better late than never’_. When Anne nodded, he suspected she understood his silent intention.

The pair returned downstairs. Gilbert was happy to wait on Anne, even enjoying their little disagreements as she insisted she could be of help as he scuttled around the kitchen. Eventually, they settled on Anne lighting the candles and pouring the currant wine while Gilbert ladled the chowder in Marilla’s best soup tureen and set it in the centre of the table. As they were alone, they switched up their usual seating arrangement and placed themselves opposite one another. Gilbert said grace (intoning thanks to the gracious heavenly Father, as he had done at every meal since Anne’s first dinner at Green Gables, much to Marilla’s consternation and Mathew’s amusement) and Anne spooned their portions into bowls and plates before they settled and started eating.

“Are you excited for the Barrys’ return?” Gilbert asked, relishing the green bean casserole Anne had made.

“I have missed them,” she admitted, “but I must confess, this homecoming feels different.”

“Why?”

Anne didn’t want to answer.

In the past, when she’d been left alone to tend the Barrys’ homestead, she had always looked forward to their return, counting down the days with joyous anticipation. This past month, however, she found she’d been counting the days with a distressing discomfort. She was not eager to have the Barrys back, because their return meant that the wonderful new world she had created with Gilbert (a world of geometry, and globes, and stories of the sea, and picnics, and spelling bees, and Green Gables) would have to be put aside in favour of her duty to the family.

But Gilbert had promised he wouldn’t let her dreams slip through her fingers, and she believed him. Still, his troth did not make her disquiet over the Barrys’ arrival lessen.

“It’s complicated,” she finally admitted, reaching for her wineglass.

“We should make a toast,” Gilbert suggested, reaching for his own glass and holding it out to her. “To the Barry family’s safe return,” he said.

“To this wonderful meal,” Anne added. “And to Marilla’s health and Mathew’s darling spirit.”

“To the Autumn Jubilee.”

“To the Ferris wheel.”

Gilbert laughed, enjoying the lighthearted competition as each tried to out-toast the other.

“To friendship.”

“To kindred spirits.”

“To carrots.”

“To turnip-heads”

“To us.”

Anne paused then, seeing the heat in Gilbert’s gaze. The flames of the tapers were reflected in the hazel orbs, dark and beckoning, and Anne was certain right then that she did love Gilbert Blythe in the most terrible way. It made her selfish heart wish the Barrys would stay away another month, or that the night would never end and she wouldn’t have to return to the Barrys’ house but stay in Green Gables with Gilbert and the Cuthberts forever.

But much as Anne was a woman of imagination, she was also a woman of rationale, and she knew there was no stopping the inevitable.

The Barrys would return.

Anne would leave Green Gables.

The lessons with Gilbert would go on, but it would not be the same, and the dream of Queen’s and teaching might have to be planted in her sad graveyard of hopes.

But for now, there was still dinner, and the wine, and Gilbert’s smile.

“To Green Gables,” she said, chin held high.

Gilbert flashed Anne a look she thought might be filled with adoration, but wouldn’t let herself dwell on the possibility, just as she wouldn’t’ let herself think that his eyes had darted down to her mouth, perhaps in remembrance of how they’d tasted under the moonshine and ferns (goodness knows, she thought of his gossamer kisses often enough). Instead, she waited, one copper brow arching impatiently.

Gilbert chuckled.

“To Green Gables,” he agreed, clinking his glass to Anne’s as gently as a lover’s kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LONGEST CHAPTER EVAR!!!!!!!
> 
> But well worth it, I hope.
> 
> As always, every single one of you who has been enjoying this story hold a special place in my heart. If you kudos, or bookmarked, or commented, or subscribed, another round of thanks!
> 
> Next Chapter: The Night-that-Never-Happened is an easy thing to forget, except that neither Anne or Gilbert are very good at forgetting


	8. The Equal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So long as he did not know her for what she was (the orphan, the maid, the homely little redhead) Anne imagined that the stranger could be the lifemate she’d so earnestly wished was out there waiting for her. And even though it was only a wish, and all would return to pumpkins and mice come morning, at least they could have this one night to talk and laugh and dance and, perhaps, even fall in love.

_It was her third dance of the night with the Moonlight Prince and Anne was so lightheaded with glee that she worried the punch might have been spiked. For what else other than drunkenness could explain the giddy explosion rippling through her body?_

_She adored that her partner was so perfectly tall that she might rest her head on his shoulder if she dared, but that would mean she couldn’t look at him, and she did so like looking at him. He was leading them through the steps of a lively waltz, his paces even and measured, never too far for her to keep up, and not once had he stepped on her toes. Where his body went, hers followed in perfect synchronicity and it made Anne wish she could be one of the many spectators that surrounded the ballroom so that she might watch their lovely dancing, undecided on what could be better, to be the audience or the performer._

_As it was, she was bound to the role of player in this waltz, and the arrangement suited her just fine if it meant she could continue to spin the night way in the fetching man’s arms._

_She loved how large and warm his hand felt on her back, as if he were cradling her with a reserved strength. Of course, her own hand in his was tingling with the pleasure of knowing his flesh. She’d noted the little patches of callouses on his palm during their first dance, realizing that he was a man who knew labour, and it made Anne’s imagination run wild with ideas of him as a navy officer hoisting sails, or a lumberjack from the vast forests of Quebec, or a gentleman farmer come to town for a night of splendor after a day tilling his fields._

_Part of her wanted desperately to ask him, but another part rather enjoyed the thrill of the mystery, content to draw conclusions about the handsome man as the night wore on._

_Of course, there was more to Anne’s attraction to him beyond his good looks and the exciting air of anonymity._

_He had charmed her first with his words._

_After meeting at the refreshment table where he had complimented her reading, Anne and the Moonlight Prince had talked for almost an hour before deciding to take to the dancefloor._

_They’d spent most of that time absorbed in brilliant conversation about Jane Eyre, at first highlighting favourite passages before elaborating on characters, themes, and literary devices that gave life to the romantically tragical tale of the plain protagonist and her quest to live a life true to herself no matter the obstacles, and temptations, thrown in her way. Anne had been so delighted in the analysis that she’d nearly let slip her personal connection to the book; that she’d bonded with Jane Eyre because she was an orphan, too, and now a servant, and how she was plain but intelligent and wished with all her heart that she could know the freedom of living a life of her choice, a life filled with family and love and happiness. But she’d caught herself before saying a single word, and that was grand for she was not prepared to damper the man’s image of her._

_Her tall, dark stranger not only had his own fascinating thoughts on the story, but he’d listened with keen interest as Anne expressed her opinions, asking her questions or demanding explanations, needing to know why she did or didn’t like Charlotte Bronte’s text. He’d been eager and attentive, and for the first time, Anne felt as if she was truly someone’s equal, and she realized that, for all this stranger knew, she was._

_When they’d met at the punchbowl, their conversation had so quickly and zealously turned to Jane Eyre that Anne realized that they’d never properly introduced themselves. No names had been exchanged, and it was funny when, upon asking her to dance for the first time, the Moonlight Prince had realized the same thing, for he rubbed the back of his neck as he fumbled through the invitation, struggling to ask properly without knowing her name._

_Anne, amused at the curious situation they found themselves in, had simply taken his hand and brought him onto the dancefloor, promising to let him take the lead_ only _if they did not trade names. Though the stranger tried to protest at first, Anne promised to leave him high and dry if he did not agree to her terms, and with shy smile, the man had acquiesced. Anne was glad for his compliance, for she truly had not wanted to abandon him, but neither did she want to break the illusion that he must have of her as an educated and worthy woman to pursue. Perhaps he thought her a Redmond student come to Charlottetown to visit relatives, or the daughter of a gold mine owner doing her society rounds, or even a fresh new debutante premiering her blossoming charms._

_So long as he did not know her for what she was (the orphan, the maid, the homely little redhead) Anne imagined that the stranger could be the lifemate she’d so earnestly wished was out there waiting for her. And even though it was only a wish, and all would return to pumpkins and mice come morning, at least they could have this one night to talk and laugh and dance and, perhaps, even fall in love._

_It was a grand thing to imagine, and the sensation made Anne almost as dizzy as their spinning, her laughter carrying over the music and setting her partner off in his own glad chortles. They laughed together until the dance was over, moving to the wall where her Moonlight Prince excused himself._

_Fanning her flushed face, Anne took in the guests that milled throughout the ballroom as they waited for the musicians to begin their next song. As she scanned the faces, she spotted Diana, the kindred spirits making eye contact across the hall. Diana smiled when she caught her friend’s eye, as if to say she was having a grand time and she hoped Anne was, too. When Anne nodded, Diana pinched her limps in an impish pucker before casually looping her hand in the curve of Fred Wright’s elbow, the jovial young man speaking on a subject that dear Diana was pretending to politely follow when truly she was keeping her attention on Anne in a bid to silently communicate her intentions. Anne watched as Diana tilted her chin just so in the direction of the French doors that led out to the gardens, and the seventeen-year old knew what her friend was about, and a perfectly mischievous smile broke out across her face._

_A proper lady’s maid would never have allowed their charge to slip away from a party, unchaperoned, with a young bachelor, but Anne felt she was more of a beloved friend to Diana rather than a servant, and knowing how much the black haired beauty esteemed the kind and simple Fred, Anne did not foresee any harm in turning a blind eye to their escape._

_“Punch for the most graceful dance partner in all of Charlottetown.”_

_Anne flinched a little when a glass of bright liquid was thrust before her, and chuckled as she accepted the drink and raised her cup in a polite salute to the compliment her mystery man had paid her. The punch was sweet and cold, and drinking it not only quenched her thirst, but it gave her something to do beside ogle the Moonlight Prince._

_“Dancing is such parching activity,” she commented, glancing at the man out of the corner of her eye and finding herself utterly transfixed by the bobbing motion of his adam’s apple as he took five deep gulps of his own punch, emptying the glass with a refreshed sigh._

_“Indeed,” he agreed, smiling at her. “I’m sorry I can’t ask for another trip across the dancefloor.”_

_“Why?” Anne asked._

_“Because, humble man of humble means that I am, even I know that more than two dances with the same partner suggests intentions beyond the ballroom.”_

_“Oh, is that true?” Anne wondered, wishing she’d paid more attention to Mrs. Barry’s etiquette lessons._

_“I’m afraid it is.”_

_“Well, we’ve just had our third dance. Are you suggesting there are intentions between us?”_

_He didn’t answer, but he did look at her, hazel eyes roving across her face and shoulders, down her body from bosom to hips to ankles before climbing back up with a deliberate sensuality that was brazen. Anne knew she should slap him for the impertinence, but instead she took the opportunity to caress him with her own eyes, tracing the straight lines of his torso, his thighs, and his strong arms. When their eyes locked, it was a long moment before either breathed, caught up in a trance, the magic of the night and the undeniable pull of_ something _making it impossible to disconnect._

_“My, it’s warm in here, don’t you find?” the Moonlight Prince asked, sounding winded._

_“Perhaps the dancing has overheated you?” Anne suggested, watching as the man pulled at his collar and ran a hand through his wonderful dark curls and feeling like she couldn’t catch a deep breath._

_“I think you’re right. I should go find a place to get some air,” he said, eyes darting around the room._

_In that moment, Anne felt as if she’d been struck by lighting, for the idea (_ hope _) that inspired her in that moment was as splendid as it was devastating. She rushed through the scenario as quickly as she dared, not allowing time for her brain to catch up to the schemes of her heart._

_Before he could leave, Anne took the man’s hand in hers, startling him, but he did not pull away. In fact, when he squeezed her fingers against his own, Anne was certain she was making the right choice for herself._

_Steeling her courage, she tugged on his hand._

_“Follow me.”_

_It was all she could do not to click her heels when he did._

**~*~**

When the dishes were returned to the cabinet and the kitchen was scrubbed down for the night, Anne asked to be excused so that she might take an evening stroll. Though the Barrys did not like to see her wandering about on such a dreary evening, they relented under the condition that Anne be no longer than an hour.

Grabbing a wool shawl Diana had knitted for her for her sixteenth birthday, Anne left the Barry’s house, wandering aimlessly down lanes and fields, trying to make sense of the storm of complicated emotions that were swirling throughout her being like a whirlpool that wouldn’t drain.

It had been five days since the Barrys’ return from Halifax and though she was truly happy to have the them restored safe and sound, there was a sensation of guilt that stained her daily dealings with the kind family. For Anne felt terrible that, as she laid out Minnie May’s clothes, and helped Mrs. Barry into her corset, and dusted Mr. Barry’s office, that she did not commit to her chores with a content heart and mind. In fact, with each task dutifully done, Anne could feel a terrible resentment bogging her down, like rocks thrown into a lake and sinking fast to the bottom.

Where once it had not bothered Anne too much, or even at all, to take care of this darling family, she now found herself borderline hateful of their reliance on her as a servant first and foremost. She had become so accustomed to ignoring that ugly feeling, but with the new knowledge she had gained under Gilbert’s tutelage, and the hope it had ignited in her to dream of a future of her own making for the first time in years, Anne was bitterly confronted with the truth of her selfish heart.

She did not want to be the Barrys’ maid.

She wanted to answer to no soul but her own.

And if she might belong to someone else, she wanted it to be of her own choosing, someone who would support her aspirations, a helpmate and partner, a person who would not insist she sacrifice her happiness for theirs and vice-versa. Someone who would see her as an equal.

A lifemate.

Anne yearned for this person with her whole heart, and as she closed her eyes her imagination gave this ideal a shape that had become as familiar to her as her own reflection.

Tall and broad shouldered. Square jaw and dark curls. Suspenders and shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. A smile as kind as often as it was teasing and always genuine. Hazel eyes that were warm and filled with fireflies of gold, looking at the world with wonder and bravery and kindness. It was amazing how, in such a short time, and with such an inauspicious start, Gilbert Blythe had come to be the very model on which Anne measured the perfect equal to her own spirit.

A month ago, she would have been troubled by the realization, but now she could not deny the truth, for she recognized it as plainly as if she had been reading the Book of Revelation of her own heart. Gilbert Blythe was the man of Anne Shirley’s dreams. Loving him was as natural as breathing and had happened so effortlessly that she could not say when the before and after of loving him existed. Yet, there was still so much that separated them, and being the Barrys’ maid was certainly one of the larger chasms. But if she could gain entrance to Queen’s, if she could become a teacher…

And that was another obstacle all its own.

Over their month of tutoring, Anne had come to believe that, in a year, she’d be able to sit the Queen’s entrance examination and pass. But there was more to college than test scores. She would need money to attend the academy, including paying for room and board. While she did have some savings it was not much, certainly not enough to see her a year in Charlottetown, and the thought of remaining the Barrys’ maid for years as she tried to save for school was becoming a thought nigh unbearable for it all felt too much like being trapped on a wheel, running and running and getting nowhere.

Frustrated, Anne finally opened her eyes, having walked a long while blind, letting her feet carry her where they may.

She found herself at the Blythe orchard, having walked past the partially constructed midway stalls and fabulous Ferris wheel, and was standing near the family graves. Gilbert had shown her the quaint cemetery during a walk after their lessons. The holy ground was situated under a grand maple tree at the back of the Blythe house, and it was where Gilbert’s paternal great-grandparents (the pair who had begun the Blythe orchard), paternal grandparents, uncles, brother, and mother were buried. She’d been so honored that he took her to the graves, wishing she had her own family monuments to take him to where they might pray and find peace amongst the spirits of their dearly departed.

A long, low rumble caught Anne off guard, and she looked to the sky, realizing too late that, while she’d been navigating the storm of her turbulent emotions, a very real tempest had been brewing above her.

It was dark, too dark for evening. The sky was lumpy with clouds that hung low and grey, and the ongoing rumble trumpeted the beginning of heavy rainfall. Anne knew she wouldn’t make it back to the Barrys’ before the rain began, and even the closest homestead, Green Gables, seemed too far as well. Her only hope of shelter was the abandoned Blythe house, and she sincerely hoped the door was unlocked as she started making a hasty trail for the building.

The skies above her roared again, and then a cloudburst fell upon Anne like water being wrung from a sponge.

Before she’d even taken ten harried steps towards the Blythe house she was soaked through. Weighed down by her dress, Anne threw as much of her skirt over her arms as she could and dashed through the yard, her boots squelching in the slippery mud and her shawl slapping across her back like a wet rag. Practically leaping onto the porch, Anne didn’t bother jiggling the latch, but instinctively pulled on the handle, surprised and relieved when it did open. She rushed headlong into the house, slamming the door behind her and sagging against it as she tried to catch her breath. She was in the kitchen, the long table and benches as webbed with dust as she remembered from the first time she’d explored the house, and she wondered if she might start a fire in the stove (she might have to break some chair legs for wood) to warm herself when the sound of footsteps caught her off guard and a voice cried out from the grey emptiness.

“Anne?!”

Spooked, the seventeen-year old nearly jumped out of her skin, for a moment thinking the house’s soul had spoken her name, but then a small circle of light from an oil lamp appeared in the kitchen, and in a flash it was clear that it was something much more human than spirit that had called out to her.

“Gilbert!”

He entered the kitchen from the hall that led to the parlour, looking as dashing as ever with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow and the first button of his shirt undone. It made Anne acutely aware that she must be a sorry sight for him to find at his back door, drenched to the bone, boots covered in mud, and hair a wet mass over her shoulders and dripping on the floor.

“I’m so sorry –”

“What happened –”

“You go first,” she said, holding her shawl across her chest like a shield, suddenly feeling nearly naked despite the layers of sodden dress and petticoat sticking to her body.

“Anne, you need to get out of that dress,” he said, approaching her with concern. Like any good and proper lady, Anne gasped indignantly at the suggestion and held her shawl to her body tighter. “This isn’t the time for modesty,” Gilbert chided seriously. “You’ll get sick if you stay in that wet thing.”

“I’ve survived much worse than a wet dress,” Anne snorted.

“And I’ve studied influenza much more than you, and I’m saying you need to take that dress off,” Gilbert insisted. “Just, hold on.”

He left the room and Anne listened as he milled about, becoming distracted by the little lake that was forming around her feet, the mud from her boots bleeding with the rainwater and making a terrible mess.

“Here.” Gilbert returned with a thick sheet and a quilt patched from many shades of green material and laid them on the table. “I’m going to start a fire. Get out of that dress and use the sheet to dry off what you can, and the blanket to cover up, then come to the parlour and get warm.”

“My dress –”

“Just wring out what you can and hang it on the coat rack,” he suggested, pointing to the wooden stand by the door.

“But your floor –”

“I don’t give a damn about the floors!” he answered heatedly, his gaze upon her so hot Anne thought for sure he could warm her completely with that stare. “You’re more important than any old floors, Anne. Please, just cooperate before you catch a chill.”

“Yes doctor,” she groused, giving him a pointed look to let him know he could leave. Gilbert walked out of the kitchen and Anne made quick work of changing out of her clothes. Her dress and petticoat had suffered the worse of the storm, but her stockings, drawers and shift were only a bit damp and would certainly dry quickly before a fire.

And a nice, toasty fire sounded the epitome of lusciousness to the sodden young woman.

Nearly ripping off her boots, Anne dried herself with the sheet as much as possible, focusing more on her hair, which had come loose in her dash for the house. She put all of her strength into wringing out her skirts before hanging them on the coat rack as Gilbert had suggested. Satisfied, Anne covered herself in the quilt of many greens, determined not to seem as exposed as she felt, and walked into the parlour to greet Gilbert as if she was her regal Princess Cordelia.

“Hey, come on, sit here,” Gilbert gestured when Anne joined him.

He had a nice fire going (having used the legs of chairs for kindling, just as she’d thought to do) and had placed a stool near the hearth. Anne did not hesitate, too eager to get warm, and planted herself on the stool, practically vibrating with bliss when the flame’s heat curled around her skin and brought warmth back to her body.

“I think this might be heaven,” she tried to joke, peaking her hands out from the quilt to hold them against the strong heat.

“What on earth were you doing out there in this weather, Carrots?” he asked, his voice a strange mix of concern and bemusement.

“I was taking a walk, and it wasn’t storming when I started, was it?” she sniffed sassily.

“Maybe not, but the skies have been promising rain all day. And you were out walking? You’re a long way from home. How long had you been out?”

“I’m not sure. I was thinking.”

Anne didn’t tell him what she’d been thinking about, and Gilbert, realizing that if she’d wanted him to know she would have told him, did not ask. Instead, he moved to take her hands in his, rubbing them between his palms and encouraging warmth back into her fingers (though they did seem to tingle with numbness for his gentle gesture).

“Why were you here?” she asked, knowing it was curious for Gilbert to be in his old homestead.

“I’d gotten some news,” he reported.

“News brought you to an empty house?” she questioned.

“The news has to do with the house,” he clarified.

“Good news?”

“Very.”

Seeing her face brighten with curiosity, Gilbert released Anne’s hands and walked towards a side table, picking up a piece of paper that he held before her with an easy flare. She saw from the stamp that it was from the Royal Bank of Canada and shot him a questioning look that he would invite her to peer at his finances. When Gilbert just smiled and didn’t pull the paper away, Anne read it, discovering it was a bank draft. Perusing the document quickly, Anne’s eyes seemed to gasp as she took in the amount penned in the deposit box.

“Oh, Gil…”

“Bash has purchased half the orchard,” Gilbert explained, the excitement bubbling out of him like rays of sunshine. “He’s going to move here – him and Mary – to Avonlea, to this house. He’ll work the land and I’ll help him. We’ll grow apples and learn how to farm together and in a few years, he’ll buy me out and then the Blythe orchard will be the Lacroix orchard and I –”

“You’ll go to university and become a doctor!” Anne exclaimed, all at once so happy for Gilbert that she was sure she would be able to fly for how light and joyous she felt. “Oh, Gil! This isn’t just very good news; you should have used better words! This is the most superlative, extraordinary, _tremendous_ news in all of Prince Edward Island! I am so pleased for you.”

She very nearly sprang up from her stool to hug him, but when the quilt slipped from her shoulders as she began to open her arms she thought better of her affectionate action and remained seated on the stool. Gilbert didn’t seem to notice her movements, too absorbed in telling her the whole of the story of his happy news.

“Bash’s letter and the bank draft were waiting for me at Green Gables when I was done school. I was so excited I barely tasted Marilla’s dinner before dashing over here to start taking notes on what needs to be done. Bash and Mary’s plan is to move in before Christmas, so I need to get the house in order, and there are enough repairs required. I have to buy some new chairs, at least.” Gilbert only chuckled quietly when Anne rolled her eyes at his lame joke. “Mathew and Jerry already said they’d lend a hand –”

“You must let me help, too!” Anne insisted.

“Must I?” he teased.

“Absolutely,” Anne affirmed with a nod of her head. “I insist.”

“Who am I to argue with Anne Shirley?” Gilbert replied, his smile as he said the words as warm as the fire.

They fell into one of their notorious staring matches then, where each became lost in the others’ eyes, searching and exploring, wondering and imagining. Gilbert was hypnotized by the grey mists that danced in Anne’s eyes, and Anne suspected time stopped just so she could follow the paths of gold in his. She was feeling more than warm now, looking at Gilbert, so much so that when the quilt sagged off one of her shoulders to pool at the crook of her elbow, she didn’t bother to adjust it. She let Gilbert look at her exposed skin, watched as he counted the freckles on her arm, and for the first time, believed that the spots on her skin were beautiful, for Gilbert observed them with such delicate attention it was as if he was kissing each one.

“This money isn’t just for my education,” he confessed solemnly, whispering so as not to damage the magic of the moment.

“You have other grand plans for your new fortune?” she joshed.

“Yes,” he answered, all seriousness and certainty.

Anne imagined Gilbert was about to tell her that he was going to purchase the materials to build a new barn, or hire out a farmhand to help till the land for the next growing season, or perhaps return to the sea for one last hurrah to Asia or Europe. What she never imagined was for Gilbert to place the bank draft on her lap.

“What are you doing?” she asked, suddenly very nervous.

“Anne,” he whispered, taking her hand in his so he could set the paper in her palm. “Please accept it.”

“Absolutely not!” she protested, yanking her hand out of his hold as if he had burned her. “What are you on about, Gilbert Blythe?”

“I’m not the only one who needs money to further my studies and achieve my dreams,” he said. “I know you’ve been worried about Queen’s tuition and this will cover it, and then some. Your room and board would be secure, not to mention some spare dollars so you can come back to Avonlea for visits with the Barrys and the Cuthberts…me, too, if you wanted.”

“You don’t have to pay for me,” Anne insisted. She was on a tightrope, balanced between being insulted and being grateful. But mostly, Anne just felt confused over why Gilbert would share his new fortune with _her_. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want you to succeed in all of your dreams, Anne-girl, with no limitations to keep you grounded or caged. I want to support you –”

“You teach me,” she interrupted, too overwhelmed by each word that he uttered to even take note of the new, lovely endearment.

“And that will only get you _in_ to Queens,” Gilbert stressed, trying to stay collected, but Anne’s insistent balking at his offer was beginning to upset him, getting his nerves teetering on their own tightrope of frustration and provocation. “Can…can we please…just not argue for once?”

“Then can you please stop contradicting me?”

Chagrined, Gilbert looked away from Anne, collecting his mood so that he could present his argument rationally and agreeably so that she would understand how important it was that she accept his money for the sake of her future. He closed his eyes for a moment, and in that second of darkness he could see Anne’s destiny as plainly as a photograph. She was dressed in a blouse and skirt, hair up in a practical knot, eyes so limpid with life they were as blue as the waters of Trinidad as she led her class of Avonlea youngsters through their lessons. She would be a kind and patient teacher, never raising a switch even to her most challenging students, keeping their growing minds engaged with subjects of science and history and English, answering questions and taking fieldtrips and holding extra classes for those hoping to attend college one day. She would be adored by her students, respected by her community, and, if it was her wish, doted on by her simple country doctor of a husband.

It was a spectacular pantomime he envisioned, and Gilbert wanted all of it for Anne, and the only way he could truly help to set that destiny in stone was to offer her a share of his fortune. 

“You’ll get into Queen’s Anne. I have no doubt that when you sit the exam, you’ll pass with flying colours," he began. "But you’ll still need to pay Queen’s tuition, and depending on what class you enroll in, that could be two, four, or six semesters.”

“Then I’ll work to pay for them on my own,” she insisted, knowing how foolish she sounded to her own ears, for she had been lamenting the very thought of working for her schooling for the last several days.

“You’ll be working for years!” Gilbert exclaimed, putting the truth of the matter out there as vividly as the fire dancing in the hearth. “So long, that you may give up on being a teacher all together, and I don’t want to see that happen, Anne. And if you let me help you now, then that possibility doesn’t ever have the potential of becoming a reality. I’m asking you to let me help you. I want to, more than anything.”

“Why?” she whispered, drawn in by his earnest, bronze kissed expression.

“You’re my friend…my best friend. This will make you happy and I want to see you happy. I want to see you succeed.”

“It’s too much, Gilbert,” she protested, but the fire had left her and her words sounded exhausted, like they carried a white flag.

“I don’t think your future could ever cost too much,” he said genuinely. “Listen, if it means so much to you, then let’s call it a loan, not a gift. You can pay me back with your first teacher’s salary, or maybe you’ll get the Avery scholarship, then you won’t need this money, but you will to start. Please, let me help you get started, Anne.”

Anne was overwhelmed.

Gilbert had placed in her hand her freedom – her future – and it was a veritable tapestry of possibilities with threads of every colour and a design of her own choosing. With this gift (loan, treasure, _miracle_ ) she could at last free the Anne-girl she’d sequestered in that graveyard of hopes to wander amongst the tombstones and tend the flowers, doomed to a lonely life locked in that sad place. Now the gate was open, and beyond the graveyard was a garden as vast as Prince Edward Island, beckoning her to step forward. And in that garden was a boy, waving and smiling at her, waiting for her to join him in that sun-drenched paradise.

She curled her fingers around the draft, the sound of the paper crinkling causing Gilbert to smile radiantly.

“I take that as a yes?” he guessed, chuckling when Anne could only nod, and even then she wasn’t able to make her head move much, her body petrified with gladness. “Have I made the loquacious Anne Shirley speechless? I should tell the papers.”

Of course, Gilbert would find a way to joke at such a momentous time, as if he hadn’t just gifted Anne the most amazing miracle of her young life. Anne didn’t know how she could thank Gilbert for giving her the key to her dreams, so she did the one thing that seemed to come so naturally when they were together

She kissed him.

Surging forward on the tips of her toes, Anne dropped the quilt and the bank draft, lopped her arms around Gilbert’s neck and pulled him down to her, meeting him halfway with a kiss filled with every drop of gratitude and passion she held for the man. As soon as his familiar taste was returned to her, Anne sighed and Gilbert met the lovely little sound with a deep groan as he hugged her to him, her front flush with his with not a breadth of space to separate them.

It was a kiss painted in the memory of their first tryst so many nights ago, but it was also a kiss fresh with the blossom of their friendship and that made all the difference. The embrace was sweet and comforting, like the first sip of tea when you just come in from a long stroll in the brisk winter air. It was familiar, but also soothing, but also still exciting, so much so that Anne’s toes curled. She did not know how she was to stay upright for her knees felt weak, but Gilbert seemed to know what to do. Cradled in the circle of his strong arms, Anne found herself being led backwards though the parlour and carefully lowered to sit on the cushioned chesterfield.

They broke apart when she sat, but worried that Gilbert meant to leave her, Anne clutched at his collar and pulled him back down to her, stealing into his mouth with her tongue and banishing whatever protest, or laugh, or witticism was teetering on the edge of his lips. Gilbert did not fight her hold, willing to be led wherever Anne was taking him.

She started to recline on the sofa, her kiss and hands still on him, tempting Gilbert down with her until they were nearly laying on the old cushions that had not seen a lovers’ embrace in almost twenty years.

“Gil…” Anne breathed, unable to help her wicked tongue from stroking his as soon as she said his name. She felt so brazen and wild, but also shy and unsure, knowing that the position they were in was so much more scandalous than their stolen kisses in Aunt Josephine’s conservatory. What frightened Anne, just a bit, was that she didn’t particularly care how scandalous her behaviour was, not if Gilbert kept holding her, and kissing her, and looking at her, and saying her name, and loving her.

Oh, it would be worth a lifetime of Rachel Lynde’s gossip-mongering if Gilbert loved her!

“Gilbert…Gil – I jus–” 

“Shh…Anne-girl…shh…”

It was easy to shush when he kissed her again, taking with him all of her nervous jitters and replacing them with excited dancing butterflies that tickled across her body, but especially around her lips and heart and low in her belly.

It seemed easier to hold all of Gilbert to her as they reclined on the couch, their chests pressed together tight as one of her knees shifted to find purchase at his hip while one of his legs rested snug between Anne’s own, putting a scrumptious pressure between her thighs. Anne didn’t know what to make of that electric sensation and could only assume that it was pure, salacious want for she felt she could not stand to have her body parted from Gilbert’s and was sure she would go mad if he didn’t touch her.

“Please,” she begged, hardly understanding what it was she wanted but trusting Gilbert to know.

“Anne, we shouldn’t –”

“Please!”

It was just like that night in the conservatory when she’d beseeched him never to stop kissing her. And just like that night, Gilbert obeyed his Anne’s wishes. Boldly, he pressed his full weight on top of her, letting her feel him and relishing the feel of her. Cupping the back of her head, Gilbert took a moment to lock eyes with Anne, needing her to see his reverence and need and affection for her in the deep pools of his hazel soul. Looking down into her eyes, Gilbert could see the desire swirling in the grey mists, but there was fondness there, too, and elation and before he could help himself they were kissing again, long and hard with teeth and tongues and nothing to stop them.

When he touched her breast through the damp shift, the sensation of warm fingers on her cool skin had Anne ripping her mouth away from his to throw her head back and gasp, the cry sharp and thrilling to Gilbert’s ears. He wasted no time in moving his lips to her neck, kissing the pale column from earlobe to shoulder, tasting the rain and Anne on his tongue while his hand took its first tentative squeeze of her flesh.

She was soft, and plush, and she fit perfectly in his palm. He listened for a moment, seeking the slightest sound of distress, but when all he caught were her moans of consent, Gilbert became a man ruled by his desire, wanting only to bring the fire sprite in his arms the same heated pleasure she brought him. He continued to kiss her neck, her face, her lips, as his free hand found purchase in her red hair. The wet strands tickled the space between his fingers and he clenched his fist around them before smoothing his hand out to move and cup a shoulder that had become bare in the shuffle of their love making.

Feeling brazen, for Anne made him feel a true rouge as she hiked her knee further up his torso, her ankle hooking around his upper thigh while her hands roved the full expanse of his back, one edging ever closer with each sweep to the swell of his rear. And the thought of Anne’s pretty freckled hands caressing his bottom gave Gilbert such a jolting thrill that he couldn’t help but flex the fingers at her breast, his thumb tweaking the nipple he imagined was as pink as a rosebud through the white cotton.

“Gilbert!” she cried, nails digging deliciously into his back.

“Anne,” he groaned, brushing against her nipple again and marveling as it pebbled under his touch. “You don’t know – can’t understand…how…I’ve wanted this…for so long I’ve wanted…”

He was speaking nonsense, unable to express himself properly. He wanted to say how he’d been waiting for her to give him the slightest sign that he had a chance, that she reciprocated his feelings, and not just their mutual attraction, but all of the other emotions that bubbled within his heart since the moment he’d heard her recitation at Ms. Barry’s. He adored her, admired her, respected her, worried for her, cherished her…

All this time, since the first night, he’d been pining and dreaming and hoping that Anne – his sweet Carrots – might love him just as much as he loved her.

When she pushed his hand off her breast, Gilbert suddenly realized that Anne had gone still under him. Her leg was no longer hooked around him, her hands had fallen from his back, and she was staring up at him with wide, unblinking eyes and an expression that made his blood run cold.

“Anne?”

She didn’t answer him.

The storm in her eyes had gone, the grey orbs listless as they stared at him. She looked as if she’d been beaten into dismal submission, her expression so blank and distressing that not even the flush of her cheeks or the kiss-swollen fullness of her lips could disguise the dreadful mask of nothingness that fell over her face.

They stayed locked in that tableau for minutes, Anne’s face slowly shifting from vacant paleness to a pink seething agony that twisted her features and had her eyes flashing with such a rage that Gilbert was sure he could see lightning coming from the dark grey depths. Before he could ask what was wrong, Anne pushed him off her. He went sprawling to the floor, landing hard on his side, and as he tried to get his bearings, Anne was springing to her feet and fleeing the parlour. Gilbert took chase as she rushed for kitchen, never looking back at him as he called after her.

“Anne? What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

When he joined her in the kitchen, she was hastily putting her boots and dress back on, not bothering to clip every button in her desperate urgency. It was clear she was intending to leave, and though the realization wounded Gilbert as equally as a gunshot to his heart, he moved towards her so that he might help the young woman dress.

“Let me –”

“Don’t!” she hissed, pinning him in place with her grey eyes, still storming and filled with lightning, but now they were rimmed in a cyclone Gilbert could only describe as vulnerable hurt.

“Oh, Anne,” he exhaled, holding out his arms, an action of surrender and an offering of comfort. “Please, what did I –”

“I never…” she shook her head, turning away from him. She opened the door, and for a moment she was poised on the threshold, a shadow against the darkness outside, and though he wanted to reach for her, Gilbert was certain she would slip through his fingers like smoke if he tried. “I never want to see you again,” she said at last, the words raw and cold and so terrifying to Gilbert he felt as if Anne had just slammed the last nail in his coffin.

“Why?” he croaked, stuck where he stood, heartbroken and crumbling like a paper man. If only Anne would look at him, maybe he could understand, but all she graced him with was her back and her final words of the evening before walking out of his house.

“Goodbye, Mr. Blythe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...sorry.
> 
> But if it helps to ease your suffering, I promise they will not be separated for long.
> 
> Please don't hate me.
> 
> Of course, I want to thank everyone for their feedback. You are all very lovely people and I am glad that you are in the world.
> 
> Next Chapter: Chekhov's Ferris Wheel at last makes its appearance and plays a part in reuniting our young lovers.


	9. The Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fire Sprite and the Moonlight Prince.
> 
> Carrots and Turnip-Head.
> 
> Miss Shirley and Mr. Blythe.
> 
> Anne and Gilbert.

“Now this is truly marvelous!” Mrs. Barry gushed, the lights from the midway stalls reflecting on her smooth skin, painting it in a rainbow of colours.

“Remarkable, indeed. Well done, Anne!”

“Thank you, Mr. Barry,” the redhead replied, feeling a pulse of satisfaction as the Barrys’ carriage pulled up the drive to the Blythe orchard, their way marked by a trail of lanterns that had been nailed to the new fenceposts that lined the path.

The first evening of the Autumn Jubilee weekend had arrived and the event was sure to be the highlight of everyone’s calendar. Long before they even crossed the boarder of the Blythe orchard there had been groups of people milling towards the field. There was even a queue of carts and carriages cantering up the drive, making their progression steady but slow. As they came up the road, the Barrys and Anne practically had their noses pressed against the glass of the carriage window, taking in the coloured-light splendor of it all.

There were booths painted with bold shapes and wild cursive, promising prizes to the brave and daring. Men and women dressed in striped vests holding canes embellished with ribbons and bells paraded before the stalls, encouraging passersby to ‘ _step-right-up’_ and try their luck at games of chance.

The craft tents took up an entire length of the orchard so that the north perimeter looked as if it were home to a strange linen caterpillar. Those who had rented the tents had set up their tables with wares to haggle over and it certainly appeared as if they were spoiled for customers. The lanterns that had been stung up in the apple trees caused ghastly shadows to dance along the white canvas tents, making it seem as if the very night was greedy for Mrs. Lynde’s pies, or Mrs. McPherson’s jams, or Marilla’s pickles, their gnarled fingers reaching out for the delicacies with each gentle breeze.

There were performers on stilts, and clowns, and jugglers that traipsed across the grounds. Wherever they went, circles of people would ring around them to awe over their strange and wonderful talents. A band was playing somewhere in the melee – Anne remembered Josie saying something about her father having hired the group from Nova Scotia and insisting that a bandstand be constructed, pouting like a spoiled child when only a raised platform was offered for the band’s use - their music somehow carrying over the cacophonous cheers and claps and awed gasps. It was a jolly tune they were playing, and Anne thought she could pick out two fiddles and a flute, at least.

The smell of cooked apples perfumed the air, all sweet and tangy, and even though she’d had a hearty stew at dinner, Anne found her stomach arguing that it could make room for an apple blossom if she was so inclined. The fruity fragrance was accompanied by the heady aromas of roasted walnuts, cinnamon, and popcorn, and the scent was so intoxicating that Minnie May was already begging Mrs. Barry to let her sample one of every confection.

As they parked the carriage and entered the midway, Anne was gobsmacked at the number of people that had come to partake in Avonlea’s humble Autumn Jubilee. She was certain the whole village was in attendance, but it was the myriad of faces she didn’t recognize that had Anne practically trembling with pride. Just as A.V.I.S. had predicted, the draw of the first ever Ferris wheel to come to Prince Edward Island saw the population of little Avonlea almost triple, with people coming from all corners of the island – even the mainland – to take in the splendor of the iron wonder.

And what a wonder it was!

The Ferris wheel presided over the orchard from the end of the east boundary facing west, placed strategically so that lovers could admire the sunset as they were carried up and down in a merry circle. Besides the sunset, those riding the wheel would also get the best view of the entire grounds, able to see every stretch and corner, and Anne imagined that to be able to look down on the land and people from such a height must be just the same as how angles watched over them from heaven.

Taking in the great iron structure, Anne was amazed that such a marvel had managed to make it to their little island. The ride was much taller than she had imagined, as tall as the skyscrapers in New York City for all she knew. There were twenty chairs secured to the wheel, and even from where she stood at the entrance Anne could see that each carriage had at least two passengers, all of them a mix of excited, or amazed, or a bit terrified. Ladies were holding onto their hats as the wheel spun while gentlemen pointed out the sights on the ground and children laughed as they rocked their chairs to give themselves and extra thrill. Periodically, the wheel had to stop to let old passengers off and new ones on, leaving those still enjoying the ride stranded for long minutes at different segments of the wheel: sometimes in the middle, or near the ground, or even at the very top.

“You two run along,” Mr. Barry said as Minnie May tugged on Anne’s hand as they took their first steps into the mass of people. “We’ll meet back at the carriage before eight.”

“No, nine!” Minnie May declared.

“There is no negotiating, young lady,” Mrs. Barry reprimanded, patting down her youngest’s curls. “Eight o’clock is more than enough time to get your fill of sweets – don’t let her eat too many, Anne – and play some games.”

“And ride the Ferris wheel?” Minnie May asked. Mrs. Barry took in the hulking wheel and paled.

“We’ll see,” she said.

“That means no,” the ten-year old sulked before huffing away from her mother, pulling on Anne’s hand and marching towards the confection stalls. In the instant she was out of her parents’ sight, Minnie May was asking for a caramel apple, which Anne was happy to purchase for the child. The pair decided to walk the grounds first before settling on an activity, Minnie May content to munch on her treat and Anne relishing in the stray comments people would make about the Autumn Jubilee, taking each awed word as a personal compliment.

It was the first time she’d felt good about herself in days.

Three days, to be exact, and wasn’t it strange to find herself back on the same land where she had experienced the very grief that had her loathing herself and her despicable feelings? Knowing the Blythe house was somewhere cloaked in the darkness, the lone witness to her shame, Anne felt her throat start to go dry and her eyes begin to tingle with tears, but she refused to spill any more sorrow over _that_ boy.

She would have to expel her feelings another way.

“You were right, Minnie May. Mr. Blythe is horrid,” Anne said without preamble, knowing that her little companion would jump at the chance to malign Gilbert’s character, which Anne believed would make her feel a little better.

“He’s not that bad,” the ten-year old drawled, surprising Anne so much she stumbled.

“What?!”

“He promised to show me how tadpoles turn into frogs, and even said he’d help me do a science experiment on amphibian development in fresh water next spring.”

“Did he now,” Anne answered, mind numb with disbelief. “So, you wouldn’t be pleased if I disliked him, then?” she asked, disgruntled that she had lost a partner in her grudge against the man. It made her wish with her whole soul that Diana was back from France. Surely, once Diana had heard Anne’s end of the tale, she would wage a war against the obnoxious Gilbert Blythe.

“Did you and Mr. Blythe fight?” Minnie May asked.

“Why do you think we’ve quarreled?” Anne asked, managing not to sound terrified.

“You haven’t called him Turnip-Head the last few days,” Minnie May commented simply, and Anne had the good grace to be a bit mortified that her young charge knew of her unflattering nickname for the schoolmaster, no doubt having heard her address him as such on Minnie May’s first day returned to school. The delivery had been all in good fun, and Gilbert had even bowed when she’d addressed him so, almost as if he liked when she called him Turnip-Head, much to her delight and, it seemed, the amusement of his students.

As it was now, the only time Anne had seen Gilbert over the last three days had been when she’d delivered Minnie May to school. She’d started bidding the ten-year old farewell on the opposite side of the brook, too far away for Gilbert to call to her without making a scene, and before he could hope to cross the water to reach her Anne was nearly at the treeline of the Haunted Woods, escaping his sad eyes and the fireflies that no longer fluttered inside their hazel circles.

“Isn’t it a good thing I don’t call him Turnip-Head?” Anne suggested, no longer wanting to make her confessions to the ten-year-old, but feeling the need to answer her somehow. “After all, calling someone such a name isn’t kind. I was teasing him when I said it, like a joke.”

“But you never said it like it was a joke,” Minnie May observed insistently.

“How did I say it then?” Anne demanded, unable to believe she was letting herself be baited by a child. A child, by the way, that was sticky with caramel sauce and looked the very picture of a street urchin about to pickpocket some unsuspecting gentleman.

“You said it the same way papa calls mother ‘sweetheart’, or how she calls him ‘dear’,” Minnie May reported. “I thought Turnip-Head was your way of saying Mr. Blythe was a special person.”

Anne was sure that if the slightest breeze wisped past them, she would have been bowled over. As it was, she felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her, worried she might faint on the spot. It made the splinters of her heart dissolve into dust knowing that once Gilbert _had_ been a special person to her, and she’d thought she was to him, but that had been the dream of a silly girl who thought it possible to become a teacher and be commander of her own life and have the love of an intelligent and beautiful man.

Now, that girl was just a heartbroken wretch, and oh, how Anne pitied that redheaded fool. 

“I’m going to play with Charlotte,” Minnie May declared, bringing Anne out of her tumultuous thoughts. Looking ahead, Anne spotted the dark-haired MacDonald girl at a nearby stall. She was jumping up and down, fists raised in jubilation as she cheered for her older brothers who were trying their luck at knocking down milk bottles with beanbags. Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald were standing nearby sharing a bag of popcorn.

“Stay with her, then,” Anne acquiesced, “and mind her parents!”

Minnie May made no indication that she’d heard Anne’s orders, only dropped the core of what was left of her apple on the ground and rushed ahead to join her friend. Sighing at the little girl’s carelessness (and envying her that innocent freedom from consideration) Anne continued to meander through the grounds.

She wished she wasn’t alone, because being alone meant she only had her thoughts for company, and for the last three days, the only subject Anne’s thoughts insisted on focusing on all had to do with Gilbert Blythe.

She truly didn’t want to think about him, for if she did she knew she would only replay that night at his house ( _the one roosted in this very field, for goodness sake!_ ) and her heart would race as she remembered the kisses and caresses, only to break when his words – _those horrible, hateful words!_ – would ring in her memory like a maddening echo. Everything had been so wonderful before he’d spoken, and wasn’t that strange, since Anne was sure that it was Gilbert’s words that had made her fall in love with him in the first place. She’d felt so cherished, and desired while they’d embraced, and even as he’d touched her, Gilbert had been gentle and nurturing of her pleasure, but then he’d decided to use his lips for something other than kissing her senseless and spoiled everything.

_‘You don’t know – can’t understand…how…I’ve wanted this…for so long I’ve wanted...’_

I’ve wanted.

The minute he’s said that, it was as if a steak of ice had been plunged into her heart, filling her veins with winter.

Gilbert didn’t love her.

He lusted after her.

_‘You know that whatever he feels for you, it can’t be_ **love** _, Anne’_

The poisonous hiss of Josie Pye’s hurtful ( _truthful_ ) words felt like more stabs of ice to Anne’s terribly injured heart.

For years, being plain and freckled and redheaded, Anne had thought that she would be overjoyed should she ever find a man who wanted her carnally, believing she was doomed to a life of spinsterhood for all that she did not see herself as one to get a gentleman’s blood boiling. There had been offers, of course, that was part of the trials of being a maid, and those offers had all been made with a dollar amount attached and nothing else by way of affection. So, it should have thrilled Anne when Gilbert had said he wanted her. After all, their past weeks together had surely proved that he did care about her, and that was all Anne could hope for.

But he’d made his declaration _after_ he’d offered her that money…after _she_ had accepted it.

The pair had settled a transaction and all of sudden they were kissing and touching, and just as Gilbert was beginning to make love to her, he’d said those awful words and Anne had felt a grief so profound she could not bear to look at him a minute longer.

Because she wanted Gilbert to love her first.

She wanted him to kiss and touch her because he loved her, not because he coveted her body. She wanted him to want all of her, her mind and imagination, her spirit and her heart, but with his hands on her breast and his leg between hers, he hadn’t said anything resembling a love confession.

And though it had once been her fantasy to be a woman of the world with lovers to spare, when she finally had the chance to taste the forbidden fruit and gain knowledge, Anne had recoiled, because what she learned was that she wanted so much more than a rushed and heady sample of passion.

She wanted walks along the red sand beaches of the island and embraces in Hester Gray’s garden. She wanted a formal courtship with flowers and poetry. She wanted a proposal and a troth ring of pearls and an engagement and a wedding. She wanted a house by the sea, and quarrels over wallpaper, and reading by the fire, and discussions under the fir trees. She wanted lovemaking in a marriage bed and any other place they deemed suitable in their house of dreams. She wanted children, and a husband, and laughter, and happy tears, and a long life filled to the brim with joy.

She wanted a declaration, and Gilbert Blythe hadn’t made that grand profession.

Because he didn’t love her.

He _only_ desired her.

The truth hurt more than any beating she’d endured. If one could avoid such pain and heartbreak, then ignorance truly was bliss, and Anne found herself making the same wish Marilla had, wanting to turn the clocks all the way back to Diana’s party so that she might avoid having ever met Gilbert Blythe in the first place.

Maybe one day, she might get over it. 

It was doubtful, but not impossible, and the first thing she had to do was at least try and enjoy the Autumn Jubilee.

Hating to be so melancholy (and she had been glum for far too long, now), Anne decided that the only thing that could hope to lift her spirits would be to, indeed, lift herself to the sky.

She headed towards the Ferris wheel.

Though she stood in the queue for well over an hour, Anne kept herself distracted listening to the people around her, picking up pieces of their conversations, eavesdropping on squabbles and scoldings, laughing quietly to herself when she’d catch the punchline of a joke, and basking in the many praises for A.V.I.S.’s efforts in creating such a magnificent event. Perhaps the most rewarding applause came from Rachel Lynde when the woman hobbled off of the Ferris wheel and, upon seeing Anne in line, disregarded her husband’s sorry attempt to assist her crooked gait and made for the redhead, swearing that she had never been so terrified in all her life, condemning the Ferris wheel as an iron menace on decent, God-fearing souls everywhere, her denunciation only making those waiting their turn to experience the ride rile up with excitement.

Anne felt her own heart begin to flutter with elation and dread as she inched closer and closer to the platform. She was only three people away from the front of the line when her anticipation was thoroughly shattered with just two words.

“Miss Shirley?”

Anne felt as if she’d been doused in ice cold water as every congenial feeling that had been slowly coming to life within her wilted immediately upon hearing her name said by _that_ voice. And even though she’d been dreading their inevitable crossing of paths and she truly wanted nothing more than to dissolve like steam from a boiling kettle, Anne couldn’t help turning around to face the man who had broken her heart just three days ago.

Gilbert was making his way to her, cutting in line and ignoring the grumbles of those who demanded he move to the back of the queue. Even disheveled and harried he looked handsome, dark curls peeking around the brim of his hat, scarf knotted askew against his neck, cheeks brushed bronze in the lantern light and hazel eyes somehow darker and more deep than she remembered. It was universally unfair that Gilbert should still seem so beautiful to her when she was so furious with him.

Frantic, Anne turned away, praying that she’d make it to a carriage and be whisked away to the heavens before Gilbert could reach her, but much like many of her prayers, they went unanswered. When he caught up to her, he nearly reached out for her elbow, but seemed to think better of it and dropped his hand. Anne tried not to look at him out of the corner of her eye, but it was a self-imposed challenge she failed with every step.

“You look well, Miss Shirley,” Gilbert said, and Anne could feel the eyes of those surrounding them glancing at their exchange, and she was sure that the indecipherable mutterings were all questions as to why the schoolmaster was speaking so plainly with a simple maid. Desperately clinging to her pride, Anne graced Gilbert’s greeting with a curt not, but she would _not_ speak to him. “Would you mind if I rode with you?”

Anne had never once contemplated actual murder, but as it was, she was certain she would be capable of it in this moment.

How dare Gilbert Blythe!

The villain not only destroyed her heart, crushing it under his heel like a piece of candy, but now he had the gall to ask her ( _very publicly!_ ) if he could partner with her on the Ferris wheel. Truly, the man had no shame! He knew she wouldn’t speak with him – her avoidance of his person the last three days would have made that message clear – so he had concocted a scheme to get her alone and had executed it in such a way that she was unable to escape. For surely half of Avonlea had heard him ask to join her on the ride and it would be humiliating for both of them if she said ‘no’. With the joy of the Ferris wheel ruined for her before it had even begun, Anne stuck her nose in the air and stomped up to the empty carriage when prompted by the operator, twisting her body as far away as she could get from Gilbert when he moved to join her.

“You’d best hold tight to your sweetheart, miss,” the operator said, nodding his head at Gilbert and not giving Anne a chance to protest before he continued. “You’re about to get the biggest thrill of your life.”

Then with a cheeky wink, the man gave the carriage a push and the two were suddenly being hoisted up to the stars.

The Ferris wheel took them through the rotation twice in cold silence, Anne’s arms crossed as she steadfastly looked in the opposite direction of her unwanted companion. Gilbert held himself stiff and solidly beside her, making sure they did not accidentally touch for he did not think it beyond Anne to fling herself from the seat or to throw him overboard should he dare cross that border.

A quarter-way through their third rotation, the wheel stopped, making their gondola swing violently at the sudden halt. In a moment of pure terror, Anne reached out for Gilbert, clutching his jacket in a white knuckled grip. Gilbert placed his hand over hers, the other braced against the safety bar. They continued to sway for a few seconds, neither one entirely aware that their hands were linked at Gilbert’s shoulder. But soon their swinging eased and the familiar warmth of his skin against hers jolted Anne back to the present, and she snatched her hand away, folding it in her lap and clenching her jaw as she stared blankly ahead.

Gilbert watched Anne, uninterested in the view before him when the single wonder he wanted to enjoy more than anything was just inches away. He wished she would look at him so he might see his own reflection in her clear grey eyes, but he was content to admire her profile, tracing the lines of her silhouette from her brow to her chin and back again.

He knew it was playing dirty to ask her to let him ride with her on the Ferris wheel in front of so many people, but Gilbert was half mad with wanting to talk to Anne, so he’d made a bold and desperate gamble. He’d spent days lamenting over her ignoring him, and he knew he was the most pathetic of lovelorn fools when he’d gone to Mathew of all people for advice on how to fix his relationship with Anne. It was truly cringe-inducing to recall how the older man had blushed and stuttered through their conversation, and Gilbert had only said that he and Anne had quarreled, with no mention at all of wet dresses, or impassioned kisses, or heated caresses. Still, for all that it seemed to pain him, Mathew was able to impart some good advice on the nineteen-year old.

_‘I suppose…think about what you did…or said…both…and, erm…tell her you’re sorry…and mean it. Promise you won’t do…whatever you did, again, and don’t. You know, an honest apology goes a long way.’_

Gilbert had known that his actions that night in his old house were deplorable, and he was so ashamed of himself, fearing his father was rolling in his grave for he certainly had never raised Gilbert to be anything but a gentleman. His thoughts of the redhead, while always fond and often romantic, also veered around the edges of improper. And Gilbert supposed that wasn’t awful, since he was a healthy young man, and he certainly never intended to actually act out on his lascivious desires, at least, not until he’d had some promise of Anne’s feelings. For he did love the girl so much he wondered how his heart managed to remain in his chest every time he was around her since it always seemed to swell with emotion whenever he was in her company. Their month together was precious to him, just as she was, and when she’d kissed him, all of those sweet sensations had overwhelmed him, almost as if he were drunk, for it truly had felt like heady intoxication when Anne had pulled him on top of her, kissing him and holding him…letting him touch her.

Their tryst in his house reminded him so much of their first embrace at Ms. Barry’s, the two of them alone with just the barest hint of light, she luminescent as a mermaid and he helpless but to follow her beckoning song. There had been kissing and touching under the shadow of the ferns as well, though certainly nothing so salacious as three nights ago. And just as their first rendezvous had ended with Anne fleeing his embrace, so did this last encounter, only the circumstances for Anne’s departure were much more distressing if not more mysterious.

So Gilbert needed to talk to Anne and somehow make her listen to his apology, and when he’d spotted her line for the Ferris wheel he did not hesitate to charge ahead and see if he couldn’t convince her to hear him out. Of course, now that they were alone, Gilbert was finding it difficult to make his voice work. Still, he was a man of action, and when he set his mind to something he was determined to follow through.

He wanted to apologize to Anne and so he would.

“Hey,” Gilbert said when they started moving again. “Carrots?” He said the name so sweetly, but Anne refused to be influenced. She raised her chin high and didn’t even blink in Gilbert’s direction. “Fine, you don’t’ want to talk to me, so I’ll talk to you and I hope you’ll listen,” he sighed, resigned to their stalemate. “I want you to know how truly sorry I am, you have no idea how much. Anne –”

“Miss Shirley.”

“ _Anne_ ,” he insisted, sounding both vexed and wounded as he uttered her name. “I know that what I did…how I behaved that night was not proper, no matter what I thought you were telling me. I know better and I’m sorry I couldn’t control myself. When we kissed…and I held you…and we…I touched…the fault is mine entirely, not yours.”

Anne couldn’t believe her ears.

Gilbert was apologizing for their embrace, but only because he thought his touch had repulsed her?!

Was he truly so dense? Or cruel?

“Making you uncomfortable…I need you to know that was never my intention,” he continued, his voice level and strong, but there was something fragile about it too, like a chrysalis about to split. “I never want to hurt you, deliberately or otherwise, and I promise I’ll never…I’ll never so much as shake your hand if that is your wish. But I don’t think I could bear it if we weren’t friends. These past days have been more lonely than anything, Anne. So, please forgive me. I am so sorr—”

“You tried to buy me!” Anne hissed, hurt and angry and wanting very much to slap Gilbert across the face if only to get him to stop pleading for her clemency, because he sounded so very broken that she worried she might give him the reconciliation he so desperately asked for.

“What?!” Gilbert cried, flinching as if she _had_ stuck him. “I did not!”

“The money –”

“Was to help you!”

“Do you think you’re the first man who has offered to ‘ _help’_ me? To pay for me!” she demanded, turning to look at him, the raging truth in her storm cloud grey eyes matching the sudden seething fury twisting like a vice around Gilbert’s heart. Their carriage came to a halt again, lurching the pair back and forth, the swinging so violent it reminded Gilbert of being seasick those first hectic weeks on the Primrose, but the bile curdling in his belly now was the result of indignant rage rather than salty, white-capped waves.

“Who?” he asked, slow and quiet, wanting names so he could leap down from the Ferris wheel and stalk through the crowd to have a throw down with every cad that thought they could make Anne feel like a cheap plaything to be used and tossed aside.

“If I knew all of their names, I would be able to fill a catalogue,” Anne answered, resigned. “Women in service are propositioned all the time. We’re supposed to be grateful for the attention, and if not that, then we’re expected to take a payment and see the transaction done with as little fuss and scandal as possible. And you…when you said…” Anne had to take a few deep breaths, wrapping her arms around her middle as if to hold the shards of her spirit together as she voiced the feelings that had been haunting her every moment since leaving Gilbert’s arms three days ago. “You said you wanted me. You were touching me, and all you had to say to me was that you wanted…the money wasn’t because you care about me or my education or my future, was it? It was a bribe to soften your offer; to encourage me to make an arrangement with you.”

Even as she spoke, Anne felt as if Josie Pye were puppeteering her mouth to make those ghastly words spill forth. Part of her was desperate to believe that she was wrong about Gilbert, that he wasn’t so callous as to suggest she become his mistress. She’d made that assumption once and had been ruefully reprimanded for it. And yet, her knowledge of the world and society, and her keen awareness of her place in it, wouldn’t allow Anne to completely trust that Gilbert could care for her beyond the desire she stoked in him.

The thought that he could love her was surely ludicrous.

Gilbert didn’t say anything for a long time, hazel eyes roving across Anne’s face, never straying lower than her neck, concentrated on her eyes as he searched them like he was panning for gold, squinting to find even the smallest crumb of truth in her words through her very soul.

“I’d asked you once if that’s the sort of man you think I am,” Gilbert said at last, voice low and torn, as though it pained him to speak. “Remember? By the chrysanthemum bush? Do you remember what you said?”

“That I have no idea what sort of man you are,” she answered, her own voice sounding like a trembling disaster to her ears.

“And if I asked you that again, could you honestly answer with the same sentiment?”

Imagining pins holding her lips together, Anne refused to say a word even as memories of the past weeks bombarded her with blatant proof that she did know what sort of man Gilbert Blythe was. He was the kind of man who invited her to dinner with his family, and patiently instructed his difficult students, and wholeheartedly participated in activities for the betterment of Avonlea. He was a man who preferred to joke than be serious, and yet he was also a creature of cold logic rather than imagination. He was a man who knew grief and sorrow and loneliness, and yet refused to succumb to those melancholic depths, instead seeking purpose and merriment in his life, pursuing his ambitions with a focused determination that was admirable and inspiring. He was a man who had kind eyes, and a kissable mouth, and caring heart.

He wasn’t a blackguard who would purposefully seek to hurt her.

Anne wished knowing all of that mattered.

All it did was make her love for him stronger and more tragic.

So she didn't say anything.

Gilbert sighed in answer to her silence, the sound a broken, wretched noise, like the mourning wail of a banshee. They rode along in stillness for several more minutes, all the while shifting higher and higher on the wheel until they were at last perched at the very top.

All of the Autumn Jubilee was laid out before them, a quilt of life for as far as the eye could see. The moon and stars were just starting to appear overhead, twinkling gaily with mirth and magic. But for Anne and Gilbert, there was no joy to be had in the wondrous view, not when the few inches that separated them felt more vast and hollow than the distance between their carriage and the ground.

“If the idea of me is so repugnant to you, why did you kiss me that first night?” Gilbert asked, addressing the darkness in front of them rather than turning to look at her.

“I don’t know what you me –”

“I am done pretending it didn’t happen, Anne!” Gilbert declared, bold and frantic. “We met and we kissed long before we knew each other’s names. I regret that I didn’t introduce myself properly, that I didn’t insist you tell me who you were, but I know that even if I had, if I’d known your name was Anne Shirley from the start, it wouldn’t change how I feel about you. Not then, not now, not ever.”

“You’re crazy,” Anne retorted, anxious to both hear and not hear whatever Gilbert was trying to confess.

“You make me crazy, Carrots!” he exclaimed, nearly throwing his hat off his head in pure frustrated elation. He didn’t toss his hat, but he did remove it, running his fingers through his dark curls several times as he tried to gather his thoughts, leaning heavily on the chair’s security bar, making the cart sway as he took in the merry splendor of his fields. “Why did you take me to the conservatory?” he asked, finally addressing a curiosity that had been on his mind since the moment he’d seen her walk up to his schoolhouse with Minnie May; back when he only knew her as Carrots. She’d been on his mind in a loop since the soiree, and he’d promised that if he ever did meet the bewitching beauty again he’d ask her why she’d secreted him away that night, hoping that her answer would reflect some of his own feelings. He hadn’t kept that promise when they were reunited and properly introduced, but as it seemed that they were about to be parted forever, Gilbert wanted to at least get the truth of what had motivated her that first night. “Surely you must have known we’d be left alone in that room,” he continued. “And I think you might have brought me there because you’d hoped that what did happen would, but ever since we met again you’ve acted as if that night was the worst mistake of your life. So why did it happen at all? Why did you take me to the conservatory? Why did you let me hold your hand? Why did you kiss me…why did you let me kiss you back?”

Gilbert had to shut his eyes then, unashamed to let Anne see his tears, but not wanting to be a sobbing mess. He composed himself as best as possible before looking at her, and what he saw made his heart ache.

Anne was looking at him with such a raw expression he was sure that the kaleidoscope of Anne Shirley’s soul was spinning before him, letting him see all of her colours and edges and patterns. She was debating with herself on what to say, how she could make him understand just how deeply he’d wounded her. In the end, Anne knew the only hope she had of freeing Gilbert and herself from their abject misery was to tell the truth.

“Because,” she whispered, trembling as she made herself keep looking at him as she spoke. “I am Anne Shirley, an ordinary, homely lady’s maid who will never have a life that is my own, or a path of dreams I can pursue freely, or a great romance that will bring me eternal joy. I kissed you because I fell in love with you the moment you tapped me on the shoulder, though I hadn’t known it was love then. I kissed you because I knew there would never be another chance to experience you, because whoever you were there wasn’t a possibility that our destinies were entwined. I have nothing to offer you, Gilbert, not family, or beauty, or money, or even a name. All I could give you was my kiss, so I did.”

Anne took one long, quivering breath when she finished, hoping she was brave enough to face whatever reaction Gilbert would have to her words. She’d said she loved him, out loud and for the first time, hoping that if he could understand her feelings for him that he might understand her feelings about his offer.

“So you see,” she managed to continue, wiping her tears from her cheeks with the backs of her fingers. “You didn’t have to bother trying to bribe me at all. I love you so much that I would gladly let you have me for free.” She laughed without humor then, shaking her head at her foolishness. It had been too easy to reveal her love to him, but now everything just felt so much worse. “Say something!” she begged, wanting to hear his disgust at her wickedness, or his laugh at her foolishness, or his apology for the feelings he could not return and have the whole sorry thing over and done with.

“Why do you think I was trying to purchase you?” Gilbert asked instead, calm and quiet. It made Anne want to scream that _that_ was the first thing he had to say to her after her love confession.

“Like I said, you wouldn’t be the first to make that offer. And Gilbert…our relationship is…from the start it’s been…passionate…physical –”

“But it’s been emotional, and intellectual, too,” he said, and when he smiled at her Anne wasn’t sure if she was more confused or upset. “We did debate a great deal over Jane Eyre before we ever kissed,” he reminded her.

“You were hardly thinking of Jane Eyre three nights ago,” she snorted.

“You’re right,” he agreed, lowering his gaze for just a moment, as if he’d been well and truly chagrined before lifting his eyes and slowly roving them over her body, starting at her knees, then her hands clenched in her lap, then her arms and shoulder, following the path of her neck and jaw before taking a single sweeping glance at her red hair before settling on her eyes. The whole perusal made Anne shake and, just like every other time he’d looked at her so thoroughly, she wondered if he liked what he saw. “I was thinking of you,” he said at last. “How glad I was that you were letting me help you, and how pleased I was that I could. I was thinking of how intelligent you are and how happy I was that your talent won’t be wasted because you’re going to go to Queen’s and become a great teacher. I was thinking that I was the luckiest man in the world because Anne Shirley kissed me, and held me, and wanted me.

“And even if you never want to kiss me again, that’s just fine so long as I can remain your friend, Anne, because that has always been what I’ve wanted most above all else. That is what I’d meant that night when I said…what I said. I do want you, Anne, and in so many ways it would take until dawn for me to list them all. But I want your friendship first.”

“But the money –” Anne tried to argue,

“The money was a gift, truly. Given in the spirit of deep friendship.”

“Friends do not give such generous gifts,” she retorted, voice small and hurt.

“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded, tentatively sliding closer, “but a man in love would give anything to the woman that has his heart, just to make her happy.”

Anne gasped and even though their carriage wasn’t swinging the young woman felt dizzy and breathless.

“Gil –”

“I am so scandalously in love with you, Anne,” he declared, taking her hand in his and pressing the back of it to his heart so she might feel it beating his complete and true devotion, smiling down on her as if she was the only joy to be found in the world. “And I think I have been in love with you since I heard your recitation of Jane Eyre.”

“But that was before…”

“Yes,” he sighed, believing she might finally be understanding how true his feelings ran. He loved Anne Shirley more than he had ever loved anything, and to hear her say she loved him back…Gilbert was certain there was no more joyous feeling in the universe. He was loved by his darling Carrots and he felt like a giant among men, able to do anything, go anywhere, tackle every mountain and leap every ocean that blocked his path. It was exhilarating to simply live in the knowledge of Anne’s love, and Gilbert promised himself right then that he would become a doctor as quickly as possible so that he could marry and make happy for the rest of his days the exquisite fire sprite at his side.

“Truly, Gilbert?” Anne wondered, her question airy and almost too soft to hear. “Before I stole you away and seduced you in the conservatory?”

Gilbert smiled and nodded, running his thumb along her fingers as they turned to clench and unclench around his coat.

“It was a brilliant seduction, Anne, but you hardly had to go to the effort because I loved you already. Before you ever looked my way, or touched my hand, or danced with me, or kissed me. Before all of it, I saw you standing on the stage and I listened to your words and I fell in love with you on the spot.” He lowered his gaze then to admire how their hands linked against his chest before chuckling ruefully. “I wonder that I have been loving you my whole life, only I hadn’t known it because I hadn’t yet known you.”

“Like all your life your heart was just a bud,” Anne started, “growing so slowly within you, nurtured with friendship and comradery but yet still hungry for a drop of that all-consuming ardour shared only between lovers. Until, at last, you find that one person, and it is as if the bud blooms all at once into a full and luscious flower of the most silky petals, and the sensation is so startling it is as if you heart will burst out of your chest in pure happiness.”

“Yes, exactly like that,” Gilbert sighed as he rested his brow against hers, thinking Anne was the only one in the world who could understand how his love had taken him so completely, as if his chest were filled with chrysanthemums and irises and asters. “I do love you, Anne.”

“I believe you,” she said, surprising herself at how true that statement was. Gilbert Blythe loved her, plain old Anne Shirley, and she had no doubt of his feelings. It was a dream come true. “I love you, too,” she sighed, her breath sweet against his lips. “Sometimes I think I love you so much it’s just terrible.”

Gilbert chuckled, relishing the feeling of her warmth. Unable to stop himself, he reached out and caught one of the red tendrils that floated like a halo around her face. He twirled the thin hair through his fingers, rubbing it against his skin, showing her how much he adored her carrot colored tresses. Then his hand found her jaw and he cupped her cheek as delicately as if she were a precious seashell. She held her breath, expecting him to lean closer, but Gilbert, with his stalwart patience, waited for Anne to come to him.

And just like their very first kiss under moonshine and ferns, Anne leaned up and took Gilbert’s mouth with hers in a kiss that was flush with a tender joy that was as heady as it was sweet. Her lips moved over his slowly, with tentative pressure and attention, wanting the touch to last forever. Gilbert’s palm was warm against her face and his fingers traced the edge of her earlobe as he luxuriated in the unhurried caress, barely allowing his lips to leave hers for little more than breath.

Below them crowds of people – islanders, mainlanders, and beloved Avonlea villagers – scuttled about the grounds, laughing and fighting and cheering and crying, dashing between booths and craft tents, playing games and eating food. Above them, the stars glimmered like diamonds sprinkled in their rich violet expanse, the eternal muses of poets and minstrels and artists who gazed up at them and dreamed.

And somewhere in the middle of the sparkling heavens and rapturous earth, two souls found one another as if old friends reunited after a long, arduous journey.

The Fire Sprite and the Moonlight Prince.

Carrots and Turnip-Head.

Miss Shirley and Mr. Blythe.

Anne and Gilbert.

They kissed the rest of the way through their turn on the Ferris wheel, the operator having to clear his throat several times before they broke apart and realized the ride was over.

When they exited the carriage hand-in-hand and were met by the curious ( _excited, confused, unimpressed, scandalized, pleased_ ) looks of the citizens of Avonlea, Anne and Gilbert realized that the real thrill of their lives had only just begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you they wouldn't stay separated for long!
> 
> Thank you everyone for being patient after that last chapter; I know some of you weren't happy (although all of you were understanding) and I hope this Ferris Wheel ride of love has made up for any undue suffering.
> 
> Of course, I extend a hearty thanks to those who have read, commented, kudosed, bookmarked and/or subscribed. We only have one chapter left and I promise it is only happiness from here on out!
> 
> Next Chapter: and now we end with the beginning of a beautiful romance.


	10. The Lifemate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They walked along the path to the Lacroix orchard as the picture of propriety, Anne’s hand in the crook of Gilbert’s elbow the only touching permitted. They did not stroll with the stiffness of restriction or the nervousness of bashfulness, but rather with the easy gait of two souls comfortable beside one another, content to travel down life’s road together, talking and laughing and just existing in that serene moment.

_“What do you think?”_

_Anne watched as the Moonlight Prince took a long, sweeping scan of the conservatory, taking tentative steps into the semi-circular chamber, each tap of his polished leather shoes echoing against the marble floor._

_The conservatory was Anne’s most favourite room in Aunt Josephine’s mansion. It was an elegant hollow, with green-veined marble floors and a high ceiling supported by seven beautiful redwood pillars, each one carved with reliefs of fae creatures from European fairy tales and crowned with gold filigree engraved to look like roses and hyacinth and apple blossoms. The walls were plain and smooth, painted white rather than covered in patterned paper. There was a trimming of ornate mosaic tiles of every colour that outlined the upper wall and when the precious squares of glass caught the sunlight as it streamed through the floor to ceiling windows that covered the breadth of the east wall, the room glowed as if with the magic light of pixies._

_When Anne had first noted the fantastical elements of the room she’d been surprised, for Aunt Josephine had always struck the redhead as too pragmatic and curmudgeonly to allow such trivial decoration in her home. When she’d learned of Gertrude, Aunt Josephine’s bosom, darling friend and one true lifemate, and that it had been she who’d overseen the construction and decorating of the lovely alcove, Anne understood why the conservatory stood out against the rest of the practical Barry mansion. It also explained why Aunt Josephine both treasured and loathed the space that had once meant so much to her beloved. She had the plants in the room tended with rigorous care, but seldom would she visit them, often passing the door with a sad sigh before steadfastly walking away._

_It had been an honour when Aunt Josephine permitted Anne to use the room as she pleased, and the compliment of being told by the noble old lady that she saw a great deal of her Gertrude’s spirit in her was a treasure Anne carried every day. Whenever Anne was visiting Aunt Josephine with the Barrys she often took up a corner of the cushioned bench that was framed by two large peony shrubs, knees tucked in and nose buried in a book, reading to the ferns until her next round of chores demanded her attention. She watched anxiously as the Moonlight Prince perused that quiet nook now, inspecting everything as if he were soaking in every sight. She wanted him to love the room as much as she did, and when he raised a hand to stroke the dark satin leaves of the peony bush, his caresses against the plant reverently gentle and a smile complimenting his delicate touch, Anne believed he did feel the magic of this wonderful place._

_“I think you really must be some sort of sprite,” he said at last, a chuckle in his tone. “You’ve managed to bring me to an enchanted forest in the middle of Charlottetown.”_

_Anne preened, not just at the lovely compliment, but at how fanciful her Moonlight Prince addressed the conservatory. It really was a marvellous room, flourishing with greenery, the potted ferns and rose bushes making the space feel like a sort of floral jungle, and the stalks of lavender lent a soothing perfume to the room, a sweet mist of relaxation and dreams._

_“I’m pleased you like it,” she said, coming up to stand by the man, timid but determined._

_After all, she did have intentions, hazy in their realization as they may have been, in bringing the Moonlight Prince to this special place._

_Anne almost wished she had a plan, but so much of her life was structured around schedules it was absolutely suffocating. She truly was a free spirit at heart and sometimes, she just had to nourish that spark. Inviting the Moonlight Prince to this secluded corner of the house had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, and though she was nervous_ (so much could happen if they were caught – she could be sacked, which would be dreadful, or she cold be compromised which would also be dreadful but in a delightful way) _her wild spirit thrilled at the possibilities, eager and impatient to find out what would happen under the influence of privacy and moonlight._

_“Are you feeling refreshed?’ she asked, trying to be subtle in her sidling up to the man, her hand hanging pliant and empty at her side, so close to his should could feel the warmth of his knuckles whisper against hers._

_“Yes,” he told her, glancing her way before jutting his chin at the carved pillar he’d been studying. “Is this supposed to be telling a story?” he asked, referring to the relief that detailed a woman on a rock in the middle of crashing waves, her body draped in reeds and a fish’s elegant scaled tail where her legs should be._

_“You haven’t heard of Anderson’s little mermaid?” Anne asked, surprised when he shook his head. It was alarming to Anne that a man who could debate Jane Eyre so knowledgeably was ignorant of the beautifully sad story of unrequited love. It was a mistake that needed immediate rectifying._

_So she told him._

_With her usual gusto, Anne launched into the tale. She regaled him with the perfectly tragcial love that the little mermaid held for her handsome human in such impassioned detail that she never noticed when, as gently as if he were cupping a baby bird in his palm, her Moonlight Prince took her hand in his. He laced their fingers together, watching her as she told the story with a genuine interest and intensity that it was hard for Anne to look at him, but she did all of a sudden when he squeezed her hand._

_It was as if she were caught in a hiccough, her words catching in her throat. She looked at the man beside her first, seeing him smile at her, almost bashful as he squeezed her fingers in his again._

_“Keep going,” he encouraged softly._

_Anne did, amazed she even remembered the rest of the fairy tale when all her mind could focus on was that a handsome man was holding her hand and smiling at her and they were alone and it was all just as she imagined a forbidden romance to be!_

_If only he would kiss her._

_Anne was sure she could live to be an old maid and be content if only the Moonlight Prince would gift her a kiss she could cherish for all of her days._

_She finished the story, somehow not blabbering on too fast or becoming too breathless as she hurried to conclude the tale and learn his thoughts._

_“That’s an awfully sad story,” the Moonlight Prince lamented, bumping her shoulder with his._

_“I suppose,” Anne replied, bumping him back, “but I don’t think the little mermaid would agree. After all, in the end, the man she loved was happy.”_

_“But she could never be with him,” the Moonlight Prince said, sounding sorry for the pair, his hazel eyes crinkling in the corners with bitter pity._

_Anne was so pleased she nearly vibrated, for if her mystery man could be so moved by a fairy tale, then surely he was a romantic at heart, and Anne had always imagined she would fall head-over-heels for a man who was the paradigm of sensitivity and love._

_She **really** wished he would kiss her!_

_“But she was with him,” Anne argued gently. “For a while, at least. Just think, for a few timeless weeks the little mermaid was able to live a lifetime of happiness because she was with the man she loved. I think a few moments of true happiness with the one you adore above all others must be better than a long and content life without ever knowing such a love, don’t you agree?”_

_Her Moonlight Prince didn’t answer._

_Instead, he regarded her, hazel eyes contemplating her as if_ she _was a little mermaid enchanted to come to shore and dance for him. His stare was perplexing and intense, and it made Anne anxious as she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Whatever it was, did he like it?_

_When he smiled at her, eyes squinting as if he was blinded by her radiance and a curious purr vibrating from deep in his chest, Anne was overcome with a desire to be closer to him. And then the passage from Jane Eyre returned to her, the line about ‘sensations’ and ‘excitements’ and how one needed to have courage to truly know life. In this room, on this night, with this man, Anne was able to be the wild thing she’d always felt herself to be and live by the rules she made for herself. She was free from her maid duties, and her orphan past, and her hopeless future. In this room, she was a woman who, if she wanted to kiss someone, there was nothing stopping her._

_She hesitated, but before he could ask her what was wrong, before she could second guess herself, Anne raised herself up on her toes and took the kiss she’d been dreaming of all evening. She did not want to see if the Moonlight Prince would balk at her advance, so she kept her eyes screwed shut, focusing every part of her to concentrate on her lips and how they felt against his._

_It was more than she could have ever hoped to imagine, even with the poetry of Charlotte Bronte swirling across her mind. Anne had been imagining her first kiss since she was a little girl, and now it was happening, and it was so splendid and transformative that she was sure there weren’t even words to describe it! There was only a feeling, like she was full but empty, and lost but found, and in danger but safe, and the only way to keep her very soul from splintering into shards of light was to stay kissing this sensational man._

_Placing her hands on his chest, Anne pressed into the Moonlight Prince, and he obliged her embrace by cupping her arms in his hands and holding her to him. He seemed content to let her kiss him so sweetly; he even hummed along her lips and chased after her mouth when she reluctantly pulled away._

_“I’m sorry. That was rude of me,” she apologized breathlessly, dropping back down to the balls of her feet, fingers ghosting over the lapels of his jacket before she clutched them over her chest, worrying her lower lip with her teeth as she waited for the Moonlight Prince’s reaction to her daring caress._

_Without wavering, he moved to kiss her again._

_Bending his head, her Moonlight Prince kissed her deeply and the world was suddenly a kaleidoscope of sensation, pulsing with rainbows. It felt like flying and falling, like there was music only she could hear, but at the same time it was as if she_ was _the music, her body transformed into a symphony of the purest, most melodious notes being sung by a choir of angels._

_And in that moment, Anne thought she wouldn’t mind kissing this man forever._

**~*~**

“I expect full outlines of your essays on Monday morning,” Anne instructed as her students hurried to pack their books and rush for the door. “And please try and make time to practice your sums!” she called after the younger children, chuckling when she was sure they weren’t paying her any mind. After all, they’d spent most of the day asking her about Diana’s wedding than paying attention to the lessons.

The whole of Avonlea was humming with joy.

In just one day, beloved Avonlea daughter, Diana Barry, would bind herself in holy matrimony to beloved Avonlea son, Fred Wright. It was sure to be a wedding that would be remembered for ages as the entire village was invited to share in the special occasion. Anne, of course, was flattered with the title of Maid of Honour, and though she had not been Diana’s maid for years, she was happy to take on the mantel once more for her dearest friend.

After all, four years ago, when Anne had announced that she intended to leave service and sit the Queen’s entrance examinations, Diana had been the only Barry to proclaim her uncontested support and pride instantly.

Minnie May had thrown a temper tantrum of such epic proportions it was a wonder she didn’t rain down a hellfire on the community. The little girl had been enraged that Anne would leave, and her hysterical display warmed Anne’s heart, for it meant that they truly were good friends and that Anne would be missed. It only took a few weeks of promises of letters and sweets and visits before Minnie May finally gave her blessing for Anne to go off and become a teacher.

Mr. and Mrs. Barry had certainly taken the longest time of everyone in the family to come around to the idea that they would lose Anne – they not only offered to raise her salary but also threatened to put her out of the house if she didn’t change her mind – but with Diana’s and Aunt Josephine’s and the Cuthberts' and Gilbert’s encouragement, Mr. and Mrs. Barry came to accept the fact that Anne was going to pursue her own dreams and the kind thing to do was to support her choice. She did her best to assure the couple that her desire to go had no baring on their treatment of her and that, for as long as she lived, she would proclaim the Barrys of Avonlea to be the kindest and most noble family she had ever had the privilege of serving. In fact, Anne said exactly those words to the Barrys’ new maid when she assisted with the young woman’s training just before leaving for Queen’s.

When Anne had received her acceptance letter to the academy, she was sure she was stuck in the most fantastic dream and wished to never be woken. Gilbert had joked that she might want to rouse from her dream if a handsome prince came to kiss her awake, but Anne had sworn that she had no need for a prince with magic kisses when she had her very own knight at her side, and his kisses were all she desired.

And Gilbert truly gave the most wonderful kisses.

Though the couple did face some unpleasant rumors when they first announced their courtship after the Autumn Jubilee – and Anne swore that each ugly scrap of gossip was given life by the vile Josie Pye – the citizens of Avonlea quickly learned that if they gave even a hint of credence to any of the hateful stories surrounding the pair then they would have Marilla Cuthbert to contend with, and that was a bear no one dared poke.

While it was wild that a schoolmaster and a maid would gladly court one another, the townspeople soon grew bored of nattering over the two when it was so obvious that they were very much in love and that there was nothing nefarious or scandalous going on between them. No one ever found out about the money Gilbert gave in support of Anne’s education, and when she did win the Avery scholarship she insisted he take every penny back. Gilbert had agreed, but only if he could put the returned currency into a savings account for something he had planned for their future.

When he proposed to Anne after her graduation, Anne learned just what Gilbert had used the money for when he presented her with a golden troth ring, three pearls embedded in the yellow surface. Though their engagement was sure to be a long one - Gilbert had his own studies to finish and Anne was bound to fulfill her dreams of teaching – Anne had thrown her arms around Gilbert and cried tears of joy in the middle of her convocation, promising her love, her heart, and her hand.

The timing of Anne’s graduation from Queen’s and Gilbert’s acceptance to Redmond couldn’t have been more perfect than if their lives were being stitched together by Providence.

After two years, Bash had been able to purchase Gilbert’s portion of the farm, officially making the land the Lacroix orchard, and with the money from the sale, Gilbert was at last able to prepare to attend Redmond. He resigned the Avonlea school just as Anne was graduating, meaning she could take his place as schoolmistress while he was bound for college. Gilbert’s leaving Prince Edward Island also meant there was a room to let at Green Gables, and it was never a question of where Anne would live while she taught at Avonlea. In fact, Gilbert often teased that Marilla was glad to see the back of him if it meant Anne could finally take her rightful place as the redheaded missus of Green Gables.

In truth, it made Gilbert so happy for Anne that she was finally living in the house that should have been her home all along, and the Cuthberts were certainly eager to make up for the time they’d lost with the girl that should have been their daughter. Anne herself had been so overjoyed to be living with Marilla and Mathew that Gilbert worried she might not miss him while he was away at school, but when he received his first of many letters from his sweet Carrots, Gilbert knew his fears had been foolish.

Though they were separated, Gilbert and Anne were dutiful in their letters to one another, Anne sending one almost every day while Gilbert did his best to keep up, managing to get at least one letter to his fiancée every week. When he was able to visit Avonlea, often Anne would take up the role of tutor to Gilbert’s student, and the pair would pour over Gilbert’s class notes, spending hours studying at the table of Green Gables. They did manage to sneak in a few private walks, quiet dinners, and kisses in-between the study sessions, much to Mathew’s embarrassment when he’d accidentally walked in on them more than once. What had been even more mortifying was the letter Marilla had written the couple, espousing the virtues of patience, especially in the wake of a long engagement.

Their wait was just half over now.

Gilbert had started medical school last summer and was hoping to do a residency at Charlottetown’s hospital in the fall. In just two-and-a-half more years he would be Dr. Blythe and they would finally be able to get married. Sometimes, Anne felt the wait was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because she would not have to give up her dreams of teaching just as they had begun, and a curse because she so very badly wanted to be Gilbert’s wife immediately.

And with Diana getting married in less than eighteen hours, Anne’s desire to hear her own wedding bells was floating close to the surface.

At least she would see Gilbert at the wedding. He was the Best Man, after all.

Just the thought of how soon she would see her fiancé again gave Anne a surge of merriment, and she hummed a nonsense tune as she gathered her students’ assignments, believing she would have time to mark them before dinner.

“Excuse me, Miss? I have some questions about the weekend homework.”

The deep voice, so familiar but not one she was expecting to hear for hours, startled Anne and she looked up from her task to see a tall, curly-haired man making his way to her desk.

“Gilbert!” she cried, dropping her papers on the floor to rush him. Gilbert lowered his suitcase and laughed as he caught Anne, spinning her about the classroom while she clutched at his neck and peppered his jaw with kisses. “You’re just horrible, Turnip-Head,” she scolded tenderly when he put her back on her feet, though he did not release her from his embrace. “I thought I was collecting you from the train station this evening.”

“My classes were dismissed early and I did not see the point in wasting a perfectly good opportunity to surprise you,” he answered. He lifted his hands to her face, cupping her cheeks delicately and simply admiring her in all of her Anne-ness.

Four years had done little to change the fire sprite, except perhaps her hair was a bit darker now, more auburn than orange, and certainly the responsibility of school and now teaching had graced her with an air of maturity she’d never had before. It gave her the glow of one who was pleased with their life and relished in their accomplishments, and Gilbert was so humbled that he’d played some part in helping Anne achieve that radiance.

“Careful, Mr. Blythe. What would Rachel Lynde say if she saw you staring at me so?” Anne teased, her smile as outstanding as the sun.

“I think Mrs. Lynde might say ‘ _now_ _there is a man over the moon for his betrothed’_. And then she’d likely go apoplectic when she saw me do this.”

He dipped his head and took her mouth with a ferocious hunger, parting lips and stealing his tongue inside, tasting the apple she’d had with her lunch and wondering if it had come from Bash’s orchard.

The couple embraced for a long stretch of minutes, parting with breathless pants and eyes filled with equal measures of love and desire.

Slipping from his arms, Anne moved about the classroom with clipped precision, first bolting the main door, then shutting the windows, and finally flitting along the room to close and lock the shutters.

“Carrots, what are you doing?” Gilbert wondered, amused as he watched her make her way around the schoolhouse with meticulous calculation.

“Just closing things up,” she stated primly, sneaking a peak at him over her shoulder as she latched the final shutter. He waited for her at the front of the classroom, propped up against her desk with his ankles crossed and his shirtsleeves gathered at his elbows, looking the very picture of a roughish lad. “Gilbert, did I ever tell you of the fantasies I used to have about kissing you when you were tutoring me?” she asked.

“No, and I insist you tell me now,” Gilbert said, his smile so large it was a wonder his face didn’t split.

“Well,” Anne started, taking slow steps towards him. “Sometimes, when I sitting here,” she indicated the desk she often perched in during their lessons, “trying to solve a hateful geometry equation, or reviewing history dates, or noting passages in Shakespeare, and you would be at your desk marking papers, I would daydream. I’d imagine you would catch me staring at you with a besotted expression and you’d smile back, making me blush and feel warm all over.” Anne fiddled with the top button of her blouse as she spoke, still stalking carefully up to Gilbert as she relayed her fantasy. “We’d hold that stare, unable to break it, until I couldn’t’ bear it any longer and I would rise from my bench and walk over to your desk. I’d lean over, sweeping the papers off the surface and then I’d take your face in my hands, cupping your cheeks like they were precious gold. I’d brush your eyelashes with my thumbs, and we’d both start breathing so hard, our faces drawing closer, unable to help ourselves, until finally, we kissed, unsure who leaned forward first because the sensation and the waiting was just too much to bear for either of us!”

When she finished her colourful description, Anne was poised before Gilbert, biting her lip as she appraised the young man leaning against the very desk that had played a major part in the fantasy she’d just shared.

“Of course, I’d make myself stop thinking such things when you were tutoring me _before_ the Autumn Jubilee, but after…well, I rather thought I was doing myself a disservice if I forced myself to censor such a scrumptious fantasy, especially when it was likely to come true if I wanted it to.”

“Well,” Gilbert said, sounding blissfully breathless. “I’m afraid you’ll be kissing a poor medical student now, Carrots. Sorry to spoil your dream.”

“It’s not spoiled at all!” Anne exclaimed, reaching forward to bracket Gilbert against her desk, hands planted firmly on the oak wood, thumbs brushing against his thighs. “One of us is still a teacher, and that one very much would like to be kissed.”

“Why Miss Shirley!” Gilbert cried in a terrible impression of a scandalized damsel, making Anne laugh and leaving her vulnerable to his sneak attack, his hands moving to cup her face so he could kiss her quickly, tasting her laughter against his lips.

The embrace was joyous, filled with mirth and passion and love, and Gilbert felt he could spend the rest of his days holed up in the Avonlea schoolhouse kissing Anne, and to hell with his studies and her students and Diana and Fred’s wedding.

Like all of their kisses before, this one was filled with the feeling of two halves of one soul finding their missing piece, connecting after a lifetime apart. No embrace between Anne and Gilbert was ever tired with familiarity or tinted with obligation. Each one was as exciting and passionate and new and brimming with love as the first had been, even if they had not been able to see that at the time.

Pressing her body close, Anne moaned when her breasts were crushed against Gilbert’s chest, stealing her hands around his middle to caress his back and hold him to her as if she could knot him by her side forever. It was easy to get lost in the magnificence of his body, for Gilbert was warm and firm and had so many delicious places to explore. She’d told him that once when he’d pulled away from her seeking lips and hands one evening in Hester Gray’s garden not long after they’d gotten engaged. It had nearly been her undoing when Gilbert confessed that her body had him heating up with a fever so wanton that he was afraid he’d dishonor them both if they continued. The admission had made Anne feel as if her whole being was alive with starlight, and though she was on the brink of suggesting they throw honor to the wind, she knew how important it was to Gilbert that they wait for their wedding night before crossing that particular threshold, so she did her best to respect his wishes.

Still, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t tiptoe along that border every now and then.

Knowing how to distract him, Anne started kissing along Gilbert’s jaw before attacking his earlobe with her teeth. That little trick never failed to have Gilbert gasping against her shoulder as his body naturally thrust closer to hers, and that is when Anne made her move.

She pressed her hands firmly against Gilbert’s back, telling him with her fingers exactly what she planned to do and giving him an opportunity to object. When he didn’t, Anne’s palms continued to massage their way down his back, lower, and lower still until the perfect plumb flesh of his backside was cupped in her hands. Anne felt Gilbert smile against her neck as she squeezed him, enjoying the weight of him in her palm and the thrill of how forbidden the caress was between two merely engaged persons.

“Such a gentleman to permit me liberties,” Anne teased, kissing his neck, just below his racing pulse.

“Do you promise to permit me some in return?” he asked, playing along, nipping at her ear in retaliation for her clever distraction. “It’s only the polite thing to do, really.”

“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

Sneaking a hand around her waist before promptly goosing his fire sprite of a fiancée, Gilbert took advantage of her challenge.

When Anne and Gilbert at last left the schoolhouse, not even Rachel Lynde would have been able to tell what liberties were or were not taken between the pair. They walked along the path to the Lacroix orchard as the picture of propriety, Anne’s hand in the crook of Gilbert’s elbow the only touching permitted. They did not stroll with the stiffness of restriction or the nervousness of bashfulness, but rather with the easy gait of two souls comfortable beside one another, content to travel down life’s road together, talking and laughing and just existing in that serene moment.

“Did I mention in my last letter that I’ve decided on a venue for our wedding?” Anne asked just as they passed the spot where the Ferris wheel had once stood, the reigning queen of the Autumn Jubilee and the only witness to their first love confession years ago.

“No, but wherever it is I’m sure it’s perfect,” Gilbert replied, all confidence and mirth. Anne smiled at him and leaned close.

“Aunt Josephine has kindly offered us the use of her house, and I thought the conservatory the absolute picture of romantical for a summer wedding.” She kissed him quickly, pulling back with a pleased grin. “What do you think?”

Gilbert smiled and pressed his brow to Anne’s.

“Like I said, perfect.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, and it's all over!
> 
> I am both so glad and so sad to have this story come to an end, for I dearly enjoyed writing it and I am happy that I've been successful in finishing it.
> 
> Thank you everyone who has read this story.
> 
> Cheers!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all!
> 
> While I am fairly new to the Anne with an E fandom, I am no stranger to Anne of Green Gables. Having been blessed (cursed) with ginger hair myself, Anne has been my own kindred spirit since childhood and continues to be a true friend to this day. 
> 
> I adore her latest adaptation and was positively inspired to take the characters for a stroll around my imagination. I hope you enjoy the story.


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